What Little Things Remain
by Flourish
Summary: Severus Snape and Hermione Granger have one thing in common: they remember because they must and they forget because they can. But one cannot run from the past forever it will always catch up. WIKTT 'These Foolish Things' challenge fic.
1. When Soft Voices Die

**Title: **What Little Things Remain  
**Author name: **Flourish  
**Author email: **flourish@blotts.org  
**Category:** Mystery  
**Subcategory: **Romance  
**Keywords:** Snape Hermione Ron Voldemort SS/HG  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Spoilers:** SS/PS, CoS, PoA, GoF, QTTA, FBaWtFT  
**Summary: **SS/HG. Severus Snape and Hermione Granger have one thing in common: they remember because they must and they forget because they can. But one cannot run from the past forever. It eventually catches up to you, for good or for ill.   
**Disclaimer:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.  
**Author notes: __**What Little Things Remain is dedicated to my parents, without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this story woud have been finished in half the time. The cover illustration for this fic is at http://www.blotts.org/fanfiction/bookdrop.jpg. Check out my LiveJournal (http://flourish.livejournal.com) and Obscurus Books (http://www.obscurus.org, a Harry Potter fanfiction writing group). My contact information is all in my profile. Further notes on the text (and thanks to everyone who helped me out!) are avaliable at the following URL: http://www.blotts.org/fanfiction/wltrnotes.html__

  
The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all. I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water.  
_Eugene Ionesco _

  
**Part 1. When Soft Voices Die.**

New York, New York. The Empire State building was tall, but it seemed even taller to the wizards who knew how to get to the United States' Department of Magic floors below ground. Hermione Granger, however, was not below ground. She was a tourist here, like any other tourist, carrying around a camera that looked similar to a Muggle's but had a tiny _WizPerfect_ logo stamped on its side. Here she could be a part of the crowd, unnoticeable even with her bushy hair. She preferred it this way, liking nothing better than to never run into an old school chum.

Things would start off fine, at first. She'd smile as best she could, depending on how she was feeling; they'd grin with what she was sure was tremendous enthusiasm, happy in their own insular little lives. The conversation inevitably turned to Harry. When you know a famous person, someone always feels compelled to mention that fact; when they are famous and recently dead, it's a topic of rumor, of discussion, of media coverage and conspiracy theories.

Hermione pushed her hair back from her face and glanced sidewise at the other passengers, waiting impatiently for the lift to finish its run to the top. It was so easy, when someone was alive, to hate them. Occasionally love only comes after they're dead, when there's nothing more to complain about and all that's left is the gravestone and the ground and their legend. 

The yellow light hooked Hermione into that day, of course, the way yellow light often did, or the setting sun, or ringing bells, or Hogwarts. They had been together in the common room, she and Harry and Ron, having a quiet moment together while the battles raged outside. It wasn't the sort of battle where people got killed, but rather a magical battle between the wards and the spells thrown at them, the sort of battle where the people you need most devote themselves to the wards, throw themselves into them, hoping that perhaps someone will stop the Death Eaters before they break in. Harry had the sort of childish face that some people keep, never growing older but rather hovering in a prepubescent state that made you want to pinch his cheeks and tell him to go run and play.

"I'm going out there," he had said, decisively. He had been staring at the fire, its orange glow licking his face red with heat, and the words had come out of nowhere. At first, Hermione wasn't sure he had even said them. She waited, and Ron did too - they both looked at him, softly, as one looks at a madman. "I'm going to stop this. Nobody else has to die."

"I'm going with you, then," Ron told him quickly, glancing sidewise at Hermione before he set his mouth in a thin, adversarial line. His teeth worried the inside of his bottom lip.

"You haven't got a plan, have you?" Hermione finally said. The words choked their way out of her mouth. It was hard, in some ways, for her to do it - not only because she longed to say something else, something more basic of _Harry, no, you're my friend - if they all want to sacrifice their lives for you let them, but for God's sake stay here, even if it is cowardly, even if it is almost Slytherin_, but also because her throat was suddenly dry from the fire. She wondered if it had been dry from the first.

Ron and Harry looked at each other, and with a sudden draining burst of surprise, she knew that they had spoken already. "We've a plan, Hermione," Harry began. "And, well - I suppose there's no easy way to -"

Harry leaned forward, his gaze searching, trying to find something to hold onto in her countenance that might suggest sympathy. There was nothing. Ron slouched backwards, hiding his face behind Harry's back, stretching his long legs out in front of the sofa. "And it doesn't include me," she half-whispered.

"No, it doesn't," Harry confirmed. Like oil on water, anger dipped into and glossed over Hermione. A part of her was dead, she felt - the part that was Gryffindor. It was rotting and crystallizing within her, waiting to push its frustrated self out, waiting to come out her throat and mouth and bite the uncomfortable expression off his face. It was ready to erase the common room, erase the softly flickering fire, erase _everything _and just leave her where nobody could touch her, but it wasn't there yet. All she could feel was the anger dripping off her, never quite reaching her heart.

"Go, then," she told him, standing violently, motioning to Ron as well. "Go get yourself killed. Go kill yourself. But don't - don't expect me to be here." But after her violent beginning, she couldn't finish. The warm air of the common room was no longer flushing. It failed to go to her head. As they hugged her, whispered _I know you'll understand, you'll be thankful when it's over_ in her ears, she stood stock-still. And then - then they were gone, and she hated them more and more for it.

The doors opened. They were out onto the top of the building, fenced in so that no-one could jump. _Especially not suicidal witches,_ she thought. _Can't have too many more ghosts haunting it. Not enough room._ But her magic would have kicked in anyway, would have saved her. After all, it always had before.

  


* * *

  


There was a piano player in the next flat over - or a player piano, but it didn't matter which. Hermione wondered how it had fitted through the door. She had only rented this place for six months. She expected to be long gone after that. New York one day, Los Angeles the next, then Sacramento to settle down for a few months and gather funds; her parents hadn't left her enough money to tour the world without working, even with the aid of Apparation. She was quite as talented at Apparation as she had been untalented at divining. In fact, the Ministry had offered her a position on account of her skills. She had turned it down. 

"Don't you want to track down the people who did that to Harry Potter?" Cornelius Fudge had asked her, the pathetic lame-duck excuse for a man. He had been so pleading. He had wanted another famous Auror to credit his Ministry with. "We'll bend the rules for females - we'll bend the rules for age. But surely you'd like to get revenge."

"No," she'd answered. "Not really."

She was no closer to finding out if that was true now than she had ever been.

The piano kept playing, jazz classics, a once-familiar tune; then it swung into Haydn, Liszt, Bach, a plethora of songs. Hermione had never played an instrument, but through the thin walls she thought she could tell that this person was excellent. It had to be a person: such a medley would never have been mechanically created.

The sofa she lay on had come with the flat. It was slightly dingy, stained. She was spilling ashes on it from her cigarette, but she didn't particularly mind; after all, it wasn't hers. Nothing in this place was hers, except the toiletries and clothing that still lived in her super-expanded suitcase. Not much time was spent here, in any case. The job she had taken - a Herbologist's job, really, ferreting out some of the more obscure river weeds that Muggles tended to ignore and organizing potions ingredients for a large think tank - required her presence all over the region. The company had been more than happy to take her on for such a low wage. She didn't have a university education yet, but her reputation preceded her. It was on all her school reports: _undeniably the most intelligent and delightful witch of her generation,_ _sure to succeed in anything she does, sharp as a tack and more determined to make something of herself than any other Muggle-born student I've seen in my teaching career._

"Oh, will you never let me be," a pleasant baritone sang from the other side of the wall. Jazz again. "Oh, will you never set me free -"

It stopped, suddenly, and the piano with it. Hermione was almost glad. The English accent had reminded her of home and the voice had reminded her of Harry. She absentmindedly crushed her cigarette in the ashtray that lay on the floor; she didn't remember when she'd first had one - probably when she was with Viktor in Bulgaria - but they were an on-and-off habit now. The ashtray was filled with butts, traced with reds and pinks and purples from her lipstick. Without Hogwarts, she had little to tie herself to, especially not her schoolgirl persona. She took some glee in trying out every color on the Lancôme counter, buying some of them, leaving the others with as much disdain as she could muster. _Fashionable? Hardly,_ she had scoffed to the lady who worked at the counter. After all, with Lavender and Parvati long gone, there was nothing to rebel against.

Some days the lipstick made her feel pretty. Other days it made her feel bloody. On the cigarettes it looked like blood, about to ooze into the ashtray. Macbeth. For the first time in ages, she laughed out loud at her own non sequitur: "What dagger do I see before me, its handle toward my hand -"

Never let it be said that Hermione Granger doesn't know when she's hysterical. She does. It's how she stopped herself, how she sat up on the sofa and knocked over the ashtray. Her foot ground ashes into the carpet as she headed out into the cool night air, twisting her fingers in the chain around her neck, grasping the tiny book that hung there till her fingers turned white. _How late is it? Too late, if it's cool outside in the middle of this miserable summer. You might as well not even sleep. You're collecting spatium blossom at dawn._ The sky was quite black, mostly because a redwood grew directly in front of her balcony. Renting it, she had thought it was nice; it shielded her from the street. Now she scratched her arms against it and wished she'd thought of this sort of evening, when the faint whistle of a train in the distance unnerved her and she stumbled and fell at the slightest disturbance. Now she rubbed at the scratches, thumbed the book partway open and closed her eyes, bracing for the rush of brilliant whiteness she knew would come -

There was a noise behind her. She turned as quickly as she could, padding softly in her socks and grasping the wrought-iron railing for support. It was a man on the balcony next, tall and thin, dressed in fine tailored clothing. Some part of her made the connection instantly; another part had to run to catch up. Severus Snape, the ex Potions master, now a shadow on the outskirts of public life, a vague and vacant memory at the back of one's mind. The Daily Prophet must have run a story about him at some point - she still read it, every once in a while, keeping herself pleasantly out-of tune with most of the United States' wizarding community. He'd barely been seen since the fall of Lord Voldemort (_since Harry's death,_ that demon on her shoulder reminded her). She hadn't missed him at all.

She stood there, staring at him. For one horrible moment she expected to cry, but no tears came. He had never been particularly important to her, but in that one moment, his coloring and the way he stood reminded her vividly of Harry and Hogwarts. Funny, how one person could remind you of someone else, and not know it. Funny, how the most unlikely connections seemed to be getting made. 

His voice was just as she had remembered it, but surprised, an emotion she had never heard him have before. A slight flush was in his cheeks. She was suddenly certain he had had something to drink. "Miss Granger!"

_Old school chums,_ she thought glumly to herself. _Old as in what - three months? No. Two months. Less. Old school chums. Ha._ He saw her wan face, and although his expression didn't change, she knew he could smell the cigarettes. "You look awful."

Unwashed hair, lipstick rubbing off all over, muddy jeans and shirt - yes, she looked awful. "You look wonderful."

"Thank you." The thin lips formed even thinner words. "And how has _your_ summer been so far?"

She looked at him, sure he wasn't serious. He wasn't. She took him seriously anyway, trying to pull a reaction from him. "Obviously not so wonderful," Hermione told him. "I'm feeling like a killer, if you want to know the truth. A feeling you've had much experience with, I'm sure." The flimsy metal floor of the balcony caught on her socks and clattered a little as she turned on her heel and returned to the bare flat. She felt better, somehow. 

_When was the last time you talked with someone you knew at Hogwarts? A month, surely._ Ron's owls all returned unopened. The fees for long-distance owls were exorbitant, and he still sent them once a week. What was in them was immaterial. Nothing from him could interest her. Nothing could interest her, as a matter of fact, except a normal life, and that wasn't about to present itself in an owl. 

There was a noise behind her. The glass door. No visual check was necessary to see who it was. "I'm sorry, Hermione isn't in right now," she said, giving her words a stupid, puerile whine. "Please come back during normal business hours - for instance, not in the middle of the night?"

"Ah, but if you are awake and I am awake, this transgresses none of the rules of civilized conduct," Snape replied smoothly. "Perhaps it isn't gentlemanly of me - but I never recall acting as a gentleman, towards you at least. I don't intend to begin now, when you are so obviously upset."

Hermione stared sharply at him. _Upset._ Now that he had said it, she could feel the tears behind her eyes, pushing outward. Her eyes were hot and the air indoors was hotter. She hadn't put the air conditioner on - had forgotten to, for this was a Muggle flat in a complex of Muggle flats and there was no house-elf service here. Snape left the door open, though, gusting refreshing cool air through the room along with mosquitos and a slight smell of exhaust. "It's not your lookout, is it?"

He frowned as he circled her, throwing a shadow over her face as he stood quite close. The overhead light was dim; he was tall enough to blot it out. "I may not be your teacher any more, Miss Granger, but I am hardly disinterested in why you are here. The most promising student, up and disappeared - didn't even give her acceptance letter to Oxford an answer? You must know the youngest Mr. Weasley has been frantic."

"I know." She sat on the pinstriped sofa, kicking the ashtray out of the way, soiling the carpet further. Snape remained standing, hands on his hips; it would have appeared far more congruous had he been wearing a cape, and Hermione suddenly imagined him in his teaching robes. She shuddered, despite the heat.

"So. Do you plan on putting him out of his misery anytime soon, or shall I write and inform him that you have died of a - a severe chill, in Paris or New York or some other place almost as unlikely as this one?" His countenance was so severe she was almost tempted to say _yes, go ahead, let him think I'm dead_. But he would have known somehow; there would be records. 

"Why are you here?" she asked instead.

"I might ask you that question," he responded. His voice was slippery. "But I don't think I shall. Not yet, anyway. To answer yours: I live here. The United Center for Alchemical and Potions Research employs me." 

The pieces clicked into place. "The Center - I've just been hired, to organize their potions ingredients," she informed him.

"I had wondered how they would find a specialist they could afford," he mused. "It makes no matter."

There was silence, then, of the densest sort. Hermione stared at the burn marks on the sofa's arm, the stain beside it, anything but her ex-professor's gaze. Finally, she whispered out the words she dreamed of saying, repeated Harry and Ron's perspectives, flatly listed her reasons for leaving.

"Exhaustion does you no good, Miss Granger," was Snape's chilling response. "Sleep now. I will wake you in the morning." She found herself relieved to take orders, and only muttered _wake me by three o' clock _before she stumbled to her bed.

  


* * *

  


The morning was surprisingly chilly and dark, for the summer. Hermione's head ached from the jangling noise that came from the envelope sitting on her nightstand. _Of course he couldn't actually wake me up. Had to pick the most jarring charm he knew._

Instead of dwelling on the early hour, she rubbed her eyes and stood. Spatium blossom grew on the river's edge, so there was no need for waders; a quick waterproofing charm would do if she actually had to get wet. Nobody would be around at the river, and her employers certainly weren't controlling how she dressed, so she pulled on an old sweatshirt and stuffed her wand up one sleeve. The sack of Portkeys was by the door, as always, and she blurrily searched through it to find the right one. It was a Muggle pen, enchanted to carry her to the gathering site five minutes before dawn and return her five minutes after.

Lying carelessly on the sofa to wait, she beat a simple rhythm out with the Portkey, tapping it on the fabric, on her stomach, her fingernail, her nose. The beat reminded her of days in class when she was younger, in the back of her history lesson, tapping her pencil impatiently against the paper as she tried to write that perfect essay. History had never been her strong point. She had rituals, then, tapping her pencil long-short-long if she was in a mental holding pattern, tapping it in a frantic motion if she couldn't remember an event, tapping it slowly and meticulously on each corner of her paper when she finished an exam. The rituals were much harder to carry out with a quill. Sometime during second year she had realized that her little magics were merely superstition.

_Maybe it'll help something. Pen-tapping as good luck charm._

The Portkey hooked her behind her navel. She barely had time to become disoriented before she sprawled over a rusty staircase set into the riverbank, kicking an empty beer can with her foot as she kicked convulsively, having scraped a long piece of skin off under her jeans. It was an access the Muggles often used. _Well, Madam Pomfrey always told you that healing spells would come in handy,_ Hermione thought to get her mind off the blood she could feel running down her leg. Fortunately, her wand made short work of the matter. Pain gone, the river was quite beautiful, a dark mass along the rock-and-clay bed with the soft, familiar sound of running water.

The spatium blossoms were relatively easy for Hermione to locate, although she did have to reach into a patch of blackberry bushes to get to the largest flowers. She could see the light in the sky where the sun was rising, and knew that she was running out of time. Jumping over the worst patches of mud, she clambered right down to the water's edge to look back up at the hillside. There, a few feet farther down, was another patch, and she gratefully picked her way across to the tiny specks of blue. The blackberries scratched her arms, but nothing that couldn't be fixed easily. As she felt for the telling fuzzy leaves of the spatium, she looked over her shoulder at the river. The sun was tracing yellow lines across the current.

There was something hard in the soft dirt she had just felt - hard and warm. Irritated at the interruption, Hermione scratched at the dirt around it, then finally turned back to look.

For a second she didn't know what it was. Then she realized - it was a thumb, severed neatly at the finger, partially pushed into the earth. She had been scraping at its fingernail, worrying the cuticles until blood welled up over it. Behind it, deep in the underbrush where she hadn't looked before, stared two milk-white eyes in a slack-jawed face. It was a _person,_ and it was dead. As she filled her lungs with one sharp, startled breath, the Portkey pulled her from where it was clipped to her shirt and she vomited onto the floor of her flat.

  


* * *

  


_Morning_ was not something Tom Riddle had considered much, before. Light spilled pink across the room, lighting the white walls with a strange iridescence. Always in his youth there had been stolen moments, but they were mostly spent contemplating spells and theories, considering Grindelwald's mistakes, planning a rise that was inevitable. Now he stood calmly, considering the sunrise. The Malfoys had so many properties across the world they often forgot all they owned; this house, purchased from a wealthy Muggle, was the least of them. Draco Malfoy, heir to the family fortune, had certainly been happy to lend it him. The location of the house was hardly optimal - a suburb of Sacramento, a medium-sized Muggle city - but it did come with one bonus: nobody would recognize Harry Potter here. The only notable wizarding activity in the area was the United Center for Alchemical and Potions Research, and it mostly carried on farther downtown.

_After all, _Riddle considered, _none of them have ever seen Potter, barring photographs. Glamourie works well enough on those who are already half-deceived._

He had not wanted to kill the gardener he had caught peeking in the window. It reminded him too much of his own childhood, of Little Hangleton, and the man was so pathetically Muggle and typically undereducated that he almost struck pity into Riddle's heart. Almost. It was good to know, in any case, that Harry Potter's wand worked as well as his old one had. _What objection could it possibly have? After all, I am Harry Potter now._

Sun warmed his face. In his own body, reconstituted from Wormtail's flesh, he had easily burned in the light - the pale white skin had made sure of that. That form held little nostalgia for him, although it _had_ been a useful tool, terrifying to the weak-willed. Putting one hand to the thin-lipped mouth he now boasted, he recalled having nothing but a scarlet slit to speak through, recalled the long, thin fingers that danced over supplicants' heads like pale spiders. There were pleasures in that body, true enough, and also certain pains. All in all, this form was better. His following would wax once more, as those things tend to do, and he would return, this time as youthful and strong as ever.

Seating himself deliberately in a crimson leather chair, Tom Riddle stared out the seamless mirror-glass windows. Down the slope below him lay the river, a thick ribbon of brown and silver; on the horizon the sun rose, peeping between the trees of the forest on the far bank, letting its rays color the sky. Yes, the view was lovely; it nearly made up for the stench of Muggles that washed over him every time he left the gated sanctuary of the grounds. Here he could allow himself reversion. Here there was nobody to remind him of the past failures. In the end, the war was not lost. As long as he survived in spirit, the war was not lost.

Lucius Malfoy had reported it to him once, several years before - Albus Dumbledore's words of leavetaking when he had been removed from Hogwarts. _I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me._ Riddle's lips curled into a smile, deliberate, as he carefully traced patterns in the air with one of Harry Potter's hands.

_Yes. I will only truly have left that school when there are none there who are loyal to me. And there will always be those who are unhappy. There will always be those who seek guidance from an intelligent source - and perhaps, now that Dumbledore is finally gone, I will be the one to give it to them._

  


* * *

  


Hot tears ran down Hermione's cheeks as she fell against Snape's door, pounding on it with one open hand and willing it to open. Part of her wondered if he had really been there, if he was merely a fever dream - but here, he curled around it to face her, only his hands and face showing. It was almost a childish gesture, and not one she would have expected from her Potions master. She was not in a state to notice, and only thought of it later, when she lay on the sofa and sifted through things in her mind. Instead she mutely stared up at him, taking in air in great gasping breaths.

"Yes?" Snape's dark eyes traveled up and down her frame, narrowed at the expression on her face. "What - Miss Granger!" His actions belied the vitriol those words carried as he grasped her upper arm and propelled her into the flat. She stumbled as she followed him, allowing herself to be pulled to the sink and roughly washed with warm water. As her sobbing subsided, Snape stepped back from her, going to fetch a towel. It was white and clean, and she smeared it with dirt before she had finished drying her face and hands.

"I'm sorry," she muttered into it, scrubbing hard as though that would erase the puffiness from her eyes. "But you have to come. There's a dead body at the river, where I was gathering your _precious_ spatium blossoms -"

"Pull yourself together, girl," Snape replied as he paced away from her. She could almost swear he was embarrassed, now. He had touched her, comforted her, if in an odd way. It had been effective. But greasy, sneaky Snape of her school days would never have done it. He should have let her go into hysterics, let her cry and moan until he grew tired of the noise. Then he should have kicked her out.

Yet he hadn't.

"Will anyone notice if we Apparate?" His voice cut through Hermione's thoughts, and she realized she was quite thoroughly dry.

"Perhaps; sometimes there are fishermen who might see. Why can't we drive? It wouldn't be as fast, but we wouldn't be using magic."

"If you drove _or_ Apparated in this state you'd likely kill yourself, and I have not yet studied the art of driving automobiles. And never shall, if I have any say in the matter." He grasped her wrists in his long hands, tightly and quickly enough that she didn't even start. "Think of the place we're to go, and I'll think of its name -"

"Sarah Court Park. The American river," Hermione said automatically.

"There. Now, think of it!"

She forced an image of the river into her mind: the staircase, the tangles of blackberry, the hard clay and the blue-brown water. Joint Apparation was not something she practiced every day, and it was certainly not something that she wished to experience more often. The feeling of being taken apart and put back together that one always got from Apparation was doubled. For a moment, she felt as though she had been recombined with pieces of Snape. The nose and the high cheekbones only found their correct positions a moment before the river snapped into view. They had almost not concentrated hard enough to return themselves to their whole selves. 

"Come on," Hermione found herself saying, and she clattered down the stairs - not falling this time - to the bottom. She stopped on the tiny bluff the water had carved in the side of the hill, waiting for Snape to arrive behind her. "Go down there and look up at the hillside. It's where the blue flowers grow," she instructed, her voice slipping into a monotone. "Go on!"

"No, you don't get away from it like that," Snape told her grimly. He grasped her wrists again, as he had done when they Apparated, and tugged on them. "You're coming with me. It won't help to hide from it."

Not quite resisting, Hermione followed Snape down. He found the place almost instantly, and she stared at the ground as his long fingers pushed the thorny branches out of the way. His voice was as cold and dry as when he had described Potions ingredients in class. "They cut off one thumb," he noted. "And left him so deep in the underbrush. I wonder why."

"Please don't," she said softly, but he had moved on to other thoughts. The wet ground scuffed under her shoes as Snape muttered incantations.

"Worthless Muggle," he finally decreed. The hair on the back of Hermione's neck stood up, and she finally looked into his face, though she risked seeing the body. 

"Did you just say _worthless Muggle?_" she asked, feeling the emotion she had spent earlier come back anew. "Because you do know you're speaking to a Muggle-born, you know it better than most I'm sure, and I could have been that _worthless Muggle _- "

Snape's baritone won out, of course, making her sound shrill and shrewish. His words were carefully measured, paced exactly as they had been for so many years. "I did say it, and I am sure you expected no less of me. Please do not let your paranoia get the best of you. I am not now a Death Eater, if there are still Death Eaters. And clearly whoever killed this man _was_ magical, and _was _viewing him as merely a worthless Muggle. Or couldn't you tell the sign of the Killing Curse when you saw it?"

The pure white eyes. Of course. "I wasn't in a frame of mind to think of that," Hermione said primly. But she knew why she had been so repulsed. It reminded her of Dumbledore's body, carried in from the Forbidden Forest by Ron. Rigor mortis had not set in yet, and he was limp as a rag doll, his white eyes staring blindly out of a white face. Ron had stared, too, off into the distance as the Aurors took him away for questioning.

"Come, girl," Snape told her. "I've erased your fingerprints, and mine. The Muggle police will find the body, but we won't be around to be questioned."

"Are you sure we should? We could call them now -"

"And have them suspect you, or me, or both of us? Why would we be out on the river at dawn? No, it's simpler this way. We don't need more from the body, and someone will find it before long. It's been very hot, and I understand Muggles go rafting here when it's hot." His face was stern, but she knew he was disturbed. Nobody clipped their words so unless they were disturbed. Quickly, she clutched at his wrists to Disapparate back to the apartment complex. The smell of the spatium blossom clung to her even as they disappeared.

END PART 1


	2. That's For Remembrance

**Part 2. That's For Remembrance. **

The piano was playing again, classical. Hermione heard it from in Snape's bathroom, where she stood under the shower spray and let the water wash away the tearstains. The heat brought her back to herself: she was Hermione Granger, she had always been fine before and she would be fine now.

"Fine: Fucked up, insecure, neurotic and emotional," Ron would say. But Ron was in Scotland being an Unspeakable, half the world away. Her current companion would nod icily and let it be, even if he did know how troubled she was. As she scraped at her scalp, a futile task without shampoo, she moved her mind to pleasant things: Christmas when she was very young, Hogwarts cooking, her cousins and their children. There was little enough left that wasn't tinged with grief; she hung on to what remained her own passionately.

When she was finished and dressed in clean clothes, Hermione emerged. Snape had set up a bluebell flame and was boiling something atop it. It smelled like there was rosemary in it.

"What's that?"

"A less addictive variant of the Draught of Living Death," he replied from the piano bench, letting his hands drop to his lap. "I must work tomorrow morning; I need a good rest." The words _And you'll need it, too,_ hovered in the air, unsaid.

"Thank you." He barely acknowledged her, instead standing and crossing to the counter where the flame burned. It was strange, seeing her Hogwarts professor in a Muggle kitchenette: he was too large for it by half, but too graceful to knock into things and too deeply rooted in wizarding tradition to use any Muggle appliances. "Make sure this doesn't boil over. I have other things to attend to - informing the Center that I shall be absent today, for one." Snape turned in the stylized way he had, almost clicking his heels together as he left the room. Hermione settled herself on his sofa, eyes focused on the bubbling cauldron, and slowly slipped into sleep.

Fortunately she did not dream. When she woke, this frightened her. Didn't the Muggles say dreams were a way of working out problems in one's mind, picking at the tangles till they were undone, lying in comfortable straight lines? The thought passed, however, as the world blurred back into focus. Snape had been busy: the cauldron was gone, replaced by a tiny, green glass bottle set out to cool. As she blinked her eyes in the afternoon light that sifted in the windows, a shadow fell over her face.

"I was wondering if you were planning on occupying my parlor all day." Of course it was Snape, speaking in an unfriendly tone. "If you wish, take some of my potion, by all means. But it evidently has not occurred to you that I might have visitors coming today."

He didn't have visitors coming. Otherwise he would have already known he would be missing work. "We both know that's not true - oh, just shut up and go away!" She paused and backtracked: "I mean, don't send me back to my flat. Please."

Snape's eyes flicked to the tiny book and chain around Hermione's neck. She almost flinched. "Please," she repeated. His expression reminded her of nothing more than Potions class: _Miss Granger, I believe you are passing notes._

His lips thinned into an unhappy line. "Stay if you like."

That surely would have been the end of conversation. Hermione stared at the ceiling, noticed that the sofa was far nicer than her own, thought about her empty place next door. It stood still and stale, and while she never would have dreamed of considering the Potions Master's quarters more alive than her own, they were. The rosemary hung in the air, the noonday sun giving everything a golden cast even through the blinds.

"Owl post," she called to Snape as she sat up, startled by sudden noise. A large snowy owl was tapping at the plate glass that looked out on the balcony. Snape appeared from one of the back rooms, moving in measured steps as always; his face betrayed nothing as he took the letter from the owl and sent it away. When it was gone, however, he closed the curtain over the balcony's sliding doors and sat down very slowly on one of the dining chairs. His fingers were sure, but not quite natural, as they opened the thick parchment envelope. The contrast between his white face and dark hair and clothing seemed more pronounced than ever.

"Miss Granger," he said as he read the letter, his voice tinged with something she had never heard before. "Have you seen anything odd lately?"

Rubbing the wet spot her head had made on the sofa's arm, she glanced at him. "Besides the - ? No, not really."

Snape's voice pressed on. She knew what it was, now: _urgency_, the sense that if one did not move quickly one would not be capable of moving at all in the very near future. "If this is genuine - and all evidence points to that possibility - you must fly. Weasley is safe enough, if he's an Unspeakable, but you will leave here and never come back."

There was no pin dropping to test the silence, but it was nearly complete. Hermione leaned toward him. "What did you say?" Her voice was dangerous, and she felt that coldness return inside of her. Nobody was going to dictate her life. The people who had a chance of making her do their bidding were dead, whether she wanted them to be or no.

"Go back to Scotland. Go back to Hogwarts, even better. Take your little troubles and flee. It isn't safe, any more, for you to play at being a big girl and break down on your neighbor's doorstep." His voice had returned to its customary tone, the one it had always taken in the classroom: hard, sharp, and dangerously smooth. 

Hermione raised her eyebrows - she had never mastered raising just one - and crossed her arms. "I won't."

Snape looked down the long, humped bridge of his nose at her. He said nothing.

"I won't go!"

"You will, eventually. Because if I must I will make you."

An unpleasant look crossed Hermione's face. "Then why will you be staying here?"

He turned and methodically lifted the blinds, opened the sliding-glass door, walked out onto the balcony without bothering to close it behind him. "Come back in," she told him, speaking gently for the first time in the conversation. "You're letting the cool air out and the hot air in."

"You won't back down, I see," Snape finally replied after a long moment, closing the door again and locking it. The soft _snick_ of the bolt sliding home underscored his statement. He knew that her change of tack didn't mean she had changed her mind. Somewhere, Hermione wondered if he knew all his students so well, watched their growth so carefully. Until very recently she would have become angry at being denied, railed at him and everything else nearby. But he was ignorant of her thoughts, and he continued. "We both go. The Ministry should know - and Minerva will have to step into the Headmaster's shoes."

"Thank you." Hermione stood, walked over to her former professor, and reached out a tentative hand to take the envelope from him. "May I?"

"You'll read it anyway as soon as I put it down."

She took this as an invitation and plucked the paper from his fingers. Green-gold sealing wax crumbled off as the letter was removed from its casing. It was a love note of a very strange sort: a love note to death, to destruction, to betrayal.

_I see you and your pet Mudblood have found Marquéz's body. It's a pity you did; I wouldn't have found you otherwise, I'm sure. Times do change - I remember when you called me _father_ because you had none. Now you call me _monster_. All the same, I have leisure to be merciful now. Stay out of my way and I shall stay out of yours - but do keep an eye on the Mudblood. You wouldn't want her to have an accident. _

Hermione's eyes skimmed the words, fell on the runes below it: Eihwaz and Uruz, neither reversed. "Purpose and Prowess," she said.

"A warning."

"Yes. From Lord Voldemort." Her voice wavered and her eyes remained fixed on the paper, but she could feel his nod. The slow golden light was beckoning the memories out from the book, awakening them even without her acceptance. "He called you adoptive son -"

But the words seemed to come from far away, not from her mouth, and already the light was waxing about her, then waning into a hundred disparate points, then turning each point into a candle ablaze.

  


* * *

  


Ron sat next to Hermione, Harry across from her, their feet just touching under the table. It was hard not to touch Ron's feet - like his hands, they were enormous, dwarfing Hermione's tiny slippers and making her feel delicate and petite. She saw herself from above: at this angle she was nothing but a halo of brown frizz, good-naturedly extending itself into anything nearby. 

It had been a bad hair day. She remembered that in her heart, and soon her heart was wrapped up in what was happening and too full to remember anything else.

The doors to the Great Hall swung open, gusting a wind in. "We're - it's a _troll_," Hermione half-shouted, standing and backing away from the doors. _"Run!"_ And even the teachers followed her advice. Ron and Harry stood still, as she watched the crowd of students fight for the exit, letting people flow around them. They were like rocks in a river standing there, small but determined.

"What are you doing?" she asked, grabbing Ron's arm. "Come on! You can't fight that thing alone. And -"

Then the Death Eaters came. Their white robes flooded into the hall behind the troll, and Hermione grabbed and pulled and pushed, nearly falling over the table to startle Harry into movement. The last of the students - some of the slower Hufflepuffs - were already falling under the wands of the enemy. The siege was broken: there would be a victor, soon, and the victor would surely be the Dark Lord -

A girl ran in front of Hermione, her eyes wide and blind with fear, screaming. There were bluebell flames creeping up the edge of her robes, and it took all Hermione's willpower to not reach out, tell her to just 'stop drop and roll.' Following the girl, though, was a tall Death Eater, garbed in the white and focused entirely on his prey. His mask was askew, and the blond hair made it obvious who he was, even though it was streaked with blood: Draco, who had left Hogwarts. Draco, whose allegiance was never in question. 

"_Malfoy._" Ron called his name, and Draco stopped, turned to look. Hermione found herself stopping too, pulled back by the arm she had hooked around Ron's. "You won't get away with this, Malfoy. I'll have your guts for garters, you dirty -"

She had never seen a face so cold and calm as she did then on Draco, with the battle raging about her, with Harry putting his back to hers to stop a Death Eater from sneaking up on them. Just as she began to run once more, ignoring Ron and Harry's death grips on her arms, she heard his voice coming from behind them.

"_Crucio._"

"_Harry!_" 

Ron convulsed, his veins standing out starkly against pale skin. Malfoy didn't matter any more. Hermione's muscles complained of the exertion as she and Harry dragged Ron away at a dead run. Draco stood still in the middle of the Great Hall, smirking. "I should kill that weasel, but I won't," he called after them. "My master wants to deal with you three. Personally."

They were the last to make it before Snape closed his teacher's entrance, the other professors barring and barricading it with magic and physical objects. Madame Pomfrey removed the curse from Ron, gently swabbing the blood from his bitten tongue and coaxing Dreamless Sleep potion down his throat.

"Ye who enter here," Pomfrey whispered, her eyes running over her unconscious charge's still form. Harry ignored her, putting his hands on Ron's and doing something that hinted of prayer. Hermione, though, knew the beginning of the sentence, and knew why she didn't vocalize it.

_Abandon all hope, ye who enter here._

Yes. It was accurate. They were trapped in the warrens of the castle, falling ever farther back into common room and dungeon. Their double-agent, their gateway to the thoughts of the enemy, was hiding with them.

"No, Poppy," came a voice from above their heads. It was Dumbledore, Fawkes perched on his shoulder. "I think that this rabbit-hole goes very, very deep, and it is very, very well protected."

And Ron woke up, good as new, as a phoenix tear fell between his parted lips.  


* * *

  


"...you must awaken some time, Miss Granger," came Snape's voice at its most sardonic. "Else what sort of a potions-brewer would I be?"

Hermione blinked: she was lying down on his sofa again. "What happened?"

One eyebrow stretched towards his hairline. "I was hoping you might be able to inform me," he admitted. "One moment you were speaking. The next you were staring off into space and clutching at your heart. I suspect - if you will permit me -" he lifted the book from where it lay on her chest. "I suspect that it has something to do with this."

"Not the _vacuita,_" she answered, too quickly, snatching her necklace away from him. It couldn't possibly be the vacuita_._ Professor McGonagall had made it herself, and there were no ill-effects from vacuitas; the staff of St. Mungo's used them regularly.

"Is that what it is? A _freedom from_?" 

She set her teeth. "Yes."

"For Weasley?"

"Yes. But it isn't your business, because it has nothing to do with what's going on here. It's my business - and Ron's."

"If it puts you out of control it _is_ my business, Miss Granger. I don't know what you were thinking to take on a second set of memories, but you've been very foolish. Especially going so far from Mr. Weasley."

Hermione sat up, noting that the sun was going down. She had been unconscious for a while, then. "Professor McGonagall made it for me; she said Ron couldn't be an Unspeakable with that kind of guilt hanging over his head. I share the memories in it, after all. It can't be much worse than if the memories were single. And travel shouldn't hurt me. Professor McGonagall - _Minerva_ said so."

A flicker of recognition passed over his face. "_Travel._ Say it again."

"Travel? What -"

"Travel - and your name, Hermione. From _Hermes._ Patron of travelers." Snape stood - he had been kneeling at the side of the sofa, before - and began to pace the room. "Say it again."

"Travel."

"Yes. It's a geas. It's a wonder you never felt it - there's a spark every time you say that word." 

She was surprised, but hid it. It was easy enough to do, as her face was still set in the waking-up patterns that mask any emotion. "A geas based on my name? And to do with travel?" This time she was ready for the spark, and she saw it, a faint reddish glow that appeared directly in front of her.

"Against travel, I'd say. You said Minerva gave you the vacuita?"

"Yes - but she wouldn't - would she?" Long shadows now covered the room, and Snape's face was hidden in them. He turned and was visible, in the light from the door, in blinding profile. 

"I don't know Minerva McGonagall's intentions, but if she thought it would be for their own ultimate good, she would do anything to anybody. She's a busybody that way. What does surprise me is the vehicle she used." He touched the vacuita again, his white finger tracing the spine of the book where it lay over Hermione's heart. "Normally, one does not attach a geas meant for a person to a thing. Can you take the necklace off?"

Putting her arms behind her head to unlatch the chain, she found there was no clasp. "That's funny," she muttered. "I ought to be able to - but I've never tried."

"I wouldn't advise you to try," Snape said in a low tone of voice. "It's two geasa, then. I could see the second when you tried to take it off. The first, to prevent you from traveling - the second, to keep the first firmly attached."

"Are you saying that when I did that - when I went away - it was as the result of a geas against travel?" Hermione felt the familiar rush of interest that came from discovering something new. "I never read about that sort of usage of geasa. It must be a new type of them. If it's tied into the vacuita, it might work." She stopped, feeling the upholstery beneath her: it was very like the upholstery on the chairs back in Gryffindor dorm. That reminded her of something. "But I've been traveling for the past two months. Wouldn't it apply to going away from Hogwarts - where it was put on me?"

"If you were alone, would you notice the fits?" She shook her head at his reminder. It was almost gentle and certainly rueful. "So you could have been having them for days. And now you're almost halfway around the world from Hogwarts - as far as you can possibly get."

"We'll be returning there, then."

"You read the letter. Where else could you go?"

Snape's face was still mask-like when Hermione looked at it then. It was the first time she had ever considered it simply as a face. It was a little jowly, a little dour, but the high cheekbones and dark eyes lent it an aristocratic air. As she looked, she saw him mouth the words she had been waiting for. "Where else would _I_ go?" They framed him as a man, as a person, as something human behind the layers of deceit.

"I don't know," Hermione conceded, unsure of which question she was answering.. "I really don't know."

  


* * *

  


The airport was crowded, the airplane only a little less so. The discussion about how they were traveling was short: Hermione suggested Apparation, Snape replied that "You-know-who will be watching for that, you stupid girl," and countered with the fact that she could drive and he could finance tickets for a plane flight. She found herself acquiescing, but only because he was so insistent. Packing was quick: she put a few changes of clothing into a bag and used Muggle post to send the rest to her cousin's house in London and was done.

"Where will we go next?" she asked in a low voice. "We could stop in Chicago. Not go to New York."

"Your geasa will still trouble you then," he said, putting his feet into the aisle; the seats were not made for tall men. "In New York it should be a little better. We shall stay there a few days and then decide where to go further." He looked at the stewardess, who was explaining the safety precautions. "Muggle contraptions. If this plane goes down, we're Apparating."

Hermione thought more about their situation, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. They were wizards in the Muggle world, a world she had lived in for most of her life. She could do magic at any time, being out of school. She was on her way back to the life she had left behind, to discover what had changed and what had stayed the same.

Curiosity had always been her besetting sin, but Hermione was of two minds about the book that hung around her neck. One part of her wanted to travel to Hogwarts, to ask McGonagall exactly what she had been thinking - and another part just wanted to take it off, damn the geasa and full speed ahead, and throw it into the sea. That part was still closed off, hidden from the rest of the world. That part still believed that Harry was dead and that no other person would be a true friend. That part was what compelled her to leave Britain in the first place.

"Geasa are forever, aren't they?" she asked, knowing the answer.

"Don't be stupid, Miss Granger. They are."

"I was only hoping." She paused. "There's so much written about them. I couldn't get through it all in a year. Maybe you'd read something I hadn't."

Snape looked past her to their window as the plane began to rattle down the runway. "I regret that I have not. Not for your sake, but for mine."

  


* * *

  


Hermione slept on the planes, drifting in and out of hazy memories and snippets of dream. All the same, she was dead tired and jittery from too much coffee by the time they finally reached New York. Their stopover in Chicago had been less than pleasant, and Snape - who seemed to be as awake as ever - decided they had to get out of the taxi right at the edge of the theater district in order to throw off any pursuit. "The drivers are absolutely murderous, and they'll talk if someone makes them. Veritaserum works just as well on Muggles as it does on wizards. This way they won't be able to figure out exactly where we are right away, at least."

So they were walking about New York at the lunch hour, in the midst of honking horns and occasional crowds of rushing people. Hermione retreated into herself a little, trailing behind her ex-professor and watching the people move ever-so-slightly out of the way for him. The swooping walk from Hogwarts was still there; it seemed to work just as well on Muggles as it did on students. 

"Snape!" A woman's voice came out of a crowd of people as they stopped at a pedestrian crossing, and then the woman appeared, dressed in a pinstripe suit and power pumps. Hermione vaguely recognized her: Arabella Figg, about Professor McGonagall's age but much more Muggle-savvy. She had watched over Harry at the Dursleys' for his childhood, right up until seventh year. Hermione had suspected, once, that she was Dumbledore's Secret Keeper.

"Arabella. What brings you to North America?"

"The same thing that brings you here - business, as usual. Oh, hello, Miss Granger." Mrs. Figg smiled in a grandmotherly way. "Minerva said something about you traveling, but from the Weasleys' reaction, I rather thought you had disappeared. It seems not."

Hermione smiled back a little weakly. "No, it seems not. I needed some time alone, thank you."

The older woman's eyebrow rose - _can _everyone_ do that except me? _Hermione thought, _And does everyone do it, all the time? _- and her smile grew thin. "Alone isn't the same as with Severus Snape, child. Think of something better, if you haven't already." She fingered an intricately braided metal collar that encircled her neck. 

"You could buy all of Britain with that bauble," Snape said in order to change the subject, betraying little surprise. "It's been a long time since I've seen dwarves' goldstrong work - except in photographs."

"If I could take it off. But I wouldn't want to even if I could," she replied. "Figg family heirloom from the middle ages. It went down to Algernon and he gave it to me."

"The Figgs have had questionable taste for centuries," came the response, but there was no bite in it. "Algernon. A name I haven't heard in years."

Figg looked sharply at him, her guarded face matching the clean lines of the suits that strode by their little reunion. "He's dead."

Snape's glance dropped to the gum-encrusted pavement. "I know. Or did you think I spent all my years of teaching with my head firmly in the sand?"

"No, I suppose not." She smiled in a final sort of way. "If you'll excuse me, I have a meeting to get to - the Carnegie Hall hideaways, you know. Give my regards to Minerva, Severus - Miss Granger." They stood silently as the tiny woman pushed her way between them and disappeared into the crowds.

A car blasted on its horn directly next to them, startling Hermione at least out of her wits. "Come on," she said, tugging lightly on his arm. "I'm tired. We need a hotel."

"And now we are known to be in New York," Snape added.

END PART 2

**For those who are confused by geasa and vacuitas:**A _geas_, plural _geasa_, is a magical obligation, prohibition or taboo in Celtic mythologies usually imposed on magical or sacred people. To break a geas goes against nature and therefore is often fatal or at least very dangerous. Each geas is unique and appropriate to the person it is imposed on, and often they are used by that person's enemy to bring them down. An example which might make this a little clearer: Cu Chullain had two geasa, to never eat dog meat and to sample all food being prepared by the side of the road. This was appropriate because his name meant "hound of Cullain," so if he ate dog meat it would be a type of cannibalism. In order to destroy him, his enemy prepared dog meat by the side of the road where he was walking, and he was forced to break one or the other geasa. 

_Vacuitas_ are explained more later, and they are a creation of my own, but if you really want to know the magical theory behind it now it won't spoil anything, so IM me and I'll tell you :) 

Thank you to Aurinia, Baroness Von Looney, Claribel, Minerva_Black, Nymue, queenalissa, RaverAngel, sethnakht, sorceress, xanthos and Zebee, who have reviewed either on FictionAlley or fanfiction.net! Your comments mean a lot to me. 


	3. Before I Built A Wall

**Part 3. Before I Built A Wall.**

They wound up in a Best Western on 55th street, paying an exorbitant price - but it was a good way from where they had been dropped off and Hermione put her foot down on walking any farther. 

"At this rate, we won't be able to stay long in New York. I don't have the money with me," Snape stated flatly. "Tomorrow we'll have to fly to London first thing. The sooner we get to Hogwarts, the better."

"Fine," Hermione replied. 

"And if you're planning to go out, we'll have to do something about that hair."

"I don't."

She lay on the bed, then, and stared up at the unrelentingly white ceiling - white, like the pages of the vacuita and the brilliant flash that would come out of it if she dared to open it. Her ex-professor made busy washing-up noises in the bathroom, running water. She listened to it and thought of Potions class, not so very long ago.

Water ran there out of taps like gargoyles, which spat and hissed. They liked Goyle the best, probably because of his name, and filled his cauldron beautifully with just the right temperature for whichever potion he was making. They liked Hermione too, but not as much. She caught Goyle talking to them, once, when she arrived early for class. 

She hadn't known Goyle could properly talk, in complete sentences with the proper complement of nouns. Around Malfoy he was limited to queries, clarifying instructions: "Fight?" "Now?"

The students did not bend their heads over their cauldrons. Inhaling the vapor was not a good idea. The tightly spelled safety goggles pinched against Hermione's head, fogged up and left red rings around her eyes. Through the misty glass she could see her teacher, a black blur in the corner of her vision. He counted bay leaves as they entered one cauldron, criticized how Seamus was chopping his boomslang skin, reduced the flames under Parvati's potion to faintly glowing embers. At her place he stopped, glanced at Malfoy sitting next to her, then back.

"I see that by sequestering you, Miss Granger, Potter and Weasley have been reduced to gibbering idiots - and Longbottom is not to be mentioned," he said in haughty tones, taking her notes and glancing over them. "Your work, however, is... acceptable." As he laid her papers back down on the desk he smiled at his Slytherin, but Hermione did not look. Her eyes were on his hand, blue-smudged with bruises, fingernails still bearing blood beneath them.

After he swooped away, she saw him go to the sinks and wash his hands. The gargoyles meekly gave him temperate water and did not talk back.

"Did you see that?" Hermione whispered to Harry, leaning over to reach his ear. "His hand -"

"What?"

She looked again. Snape was heading back. "Nothing."

She came to slowly, realizing she was not asleep and testing each sense in turn. Touch, the slightly scratchy blanket; smell, muggle detergents; taste, her own cottony mouth; hearing, the soft subliminal whirr of an air conditioner. Finally she focused her eyes on the ceiling once more. She had not slept, but only dreamed. The memory had been so real - reinforced by Ron's recollections, tied into the vacuita and the geas.

"I remembered you coming to class with blood on your hands," Hermione offered unbidden. He had not asked about the content of her visions before, but she felt compelled to share it, perhaps because he featured so prominently. She sat up in the bed to look at Snape, propping herself against the headboard. "You only did that once."

He laid his book down on the night table - he seemed to have finished - and leaned back in the one armchair the room afforded. "This is the part where you ask me about my past, and pity me, and think perhaps the greasy git isn't so bad," he noted dispassionately.

"You've had practice with ex-students."

"No. Teachers mostly. I made the mistake of telling Madam Pomfrey my life story once in pretty, civilized terms. She followed me about for a week, trying to do something for me."

Hermione met his eyes, unembarrassed. "We have that in common, then. It's not a bad start." 

Yes - he nearly smiled. "I have no intention of passing the time we still have in this purgatory by talking with you."

"Then think of something better to do."

His response was to go down to the lobby and purchase a copy of the New York Times from a vending machine. None of the articles in it could possibly be of any interest to him, but he made an excellent show of reading it, lingering over sections on science especially. Hermione finally got up and found the cartoons when sleep refused to come, but they were all either trite or of an incomprehensible serial nature.

"Miss Granger," Snape suddenly announced. "I think we have found the reason for the thumb. Señor Marquéz has been found."

The headline read, in bold print, "SACRAMENTO SERIAL KILLER CLAIMS 19TH VICTIM."

The article was vague, telling few details, but the victim's name - Joaquin Marquéz - and the picture fit the body they had found. "He kills by poison, and cuts off their thumbs," she read. "Muggles won't notice the Killing Curse."

"And _he_ could easily cast spells to make the body appear poisoned. A serial killer loose will make them quick to assign blame." Snape picked lint off his cuff, a nervous habit Hermione had occasionally noticed in class. "And no magical authorities will ever be involved - not in the States, where magic detection is less tight."

That surprised Hermione - she had never given much thought to the mechanics of magical law enforcement. "How do they track it? I mean, I always assumed -"

"In Britain, densely populated areas are scanned constantly. Magical activity is hard to hide, if someone's looking for you in a city. In the countryside, it's scanned only occasionally, and not at all within private dwellings - the law, as you might guess, is quite complex." He grimaced. "The one failing in the system is that while the fact that a spell has been cast is detected, there is no way to determine who cast the spell without putting a special enchantment on each person's wand. And in the States the scanning occurs much less frequently. _He_ probably got away scot-free."

"So when Sirius was arrested -"

Snape frowned. "Black."

"Yes. I know Professor Dumbledore told you of his innocence." She was tense as she waited for his response, wanting to know his real opinion of Harry's godfather. He had been so angry in third year, although his anger might have been magnified by her own young perspective...

"Surely you don't.... No, I see you fear it. Very well. I dislike Black. He is cocky, pretentious and ill-mannered. However, I trust Albus' judgement on his character as long as he trusts Albus' judgement on mine."

She was relieved. She sat properly up and brushed the shag carpet idly with her bare toes. "An uneasy peace, then."

Snape let a thin sigh escape his nose and mouth, blowing dark hair away from his face. "Yes, rather." She watched him contemplate their tiny, bright window, imagining him to be lost in thought about Sirius and the order of things in the New World - for so the papers called the world without Voldemort. _Without Voldemort - _what a laugh. Snape was black and white, almost a silhouette against the wall with a cut-out for his pale face. In this light, she knew her own skin was olive, her hair lighter than usual. They sat apart, each knowing the other was watching and thinking, she supposed.

_Not such a strange thing, to befriend a teacher,_ she thought. _Only to befriend _this_ teacher._

"You told me about what you saw." Snape's words dropped heavily in the sunlit room. "In your ... dream. I will tell you one thing in return: I never hated Potter, but only the rôle he had to play."

"Oh shut up about Harry - !" Hermione turned vicious. She felt a quick angry burn in her heart at the mention of his name, and the walls she had let fall sprang up again. Being separated from mainstream wizarding society had lulled her into a false sense of security. _My whole life, defined by Harry. Even in his death._ But she had thought Snape would know...

A realization came. "Oh. You're referring to James."

"Both, actually," he replied, but his tone was combative. "You are beginning to see, now, I think." She knit her brows and curled up at the head of the bed, turning away and retreating, but he would not let it go. "You know the moment when you realize that your name will only be remembered in connection with his. That even if he doesn't want it to happen, it will be so. And very worst of all, you know the moment when you realized that you love him, that there's no way you can hate him - even when you want to be as bitter as you can imagine."

Hermione's eyes darted from the professor to the book that lay on her chest, rising and falling with her breath. The moments expanded, grew into a long tableau: he was standing, moving to sit next to her, and she was motionless. Finally, like a rubber band snapping back, they contracted.

"You have an over-developed sense of honor and reciprocity. But that's it exactly."

  


* * *

  


The sub-basements of Hogwarts were twisty mazes of passages and cubbyholes, bent in on themselves until they were inextricably tangled together. The darkness hid secrets yet untapped, laid down by the Founders Four or perhaps even earlier. Death Eaters now held the Great Hall, the entrance halls, and little else. The castle did not love them, so staircases spun at their approach, doors shut, coats of armor drew their swords and fought.

"Is it true that the castle's alive?" Ron asked, holding his wand in front of him like a green-lit torch. He probed the walls with one giant hand, excited as any little boy would be at the prospect of unnumbered basements to explore.

Hermione followed him, clutching _Hogwarts: A History_ to her chest. "Well, nobody really knows, do they? Ron, I think we ought to go back."

"I think we ought to go back, Ron!" he mimicked, dancing ahead of her and then returning. "Ron, we ought to go _back_!"

"You promised Harry you wouldn't explore without him!"

A dark look passed over Ron's freckled face. "So it's Harry now, is it? I - gosh, I know you love him. I mean, we all do." He moved to stand very close to her, stopped walking, nervous in the soft light. "But doesn't - don't you love other people too?"

She played dumb and was silent in the wand light, which made Ron glow pale and ethereal against the black stone of the corridor. The air was still and musty, smelling of libraries and uncounted centuries.

"Oh, Hermione," he complained. "Make it hard for me, why don't you."

"I will," she answered with a perfectly straight face.

"You know I brought you down here because it's like sardines up there. You're absolutely the only one allowed out of the common room! Harry asked."

"I was there, Ron."

"You were? Anyway - I just - it's stupid, I suppose. Never mind," he ended lamely.

He was so stiff and worried - nothing like Viktor. "No, go on," she coaxed, smiling up at him through her eyelashes in a way she knew was attractive. She had practiced it before the Yule Ball, fluttering at Parvati and Lavender and laughing with them till her sides ached.

"Well - I only meant that I was hoping you'd. I mean. I like you, Hermione, a lot, and -"

She grinned. For Ron, this was torture. "Ah, shut up, you big ninny," she laughed good-naturedly. "I love you, too..."

It was dark when she woke up, mouthing her words and almost even saying them. Snape was not asleep: he was sitting in an armchair, resting his head in his hands. Startlingly she found herself bone-tired, not refreshed. When had she laid down? She couldn't remember. Laying her head down once more, she found herself falling into dreams - but they were not dreams. They were memories of long hours spent playing Exploding Snap in the barricaded common room, looking through the library on the few occasions they were allowed out. Once she felt Ron kiss her cheek and hold her close, and knew he was crying. That was when the owls finally made it in with news of her parents' and Bill Weasley's deaths, right before the siege was broken, right before the turning of the tide.

"You're awake?" Snape's voice cut through the crowd of memories. "Miss Granger, can you hear me?"

"Yes. I can hear you," she managed, sitting up. Her head ached and it was an effort to get it off the pillow.

"You were never asleep, I think. The geas grows more insistent."

"But we thought it would be better!" The haziness in Hermione's mind refused to go away. She remembered the one hangover she had ever experienced - this time it was a real memory, the sort that comes and goes. This was almost worse.

"We can talk more as you eat. The food is bad, but you have not eaten anything substantive for at least a day. That may be worsening matters." He pointed to a plate of chicken fingers, the sort of thing one would order for a child. They were largely tasteless, but she devoured them anyway, feeling better almost immediately. As she ate, Snape spoke. "The geas seems to be based on the amount of time you are away from Hogwarts - else why would you begin to worsen now? It does make a modicum of sense. If Minerva truly wanted to tie you to Hogwarts, there is no better way. She must have very strongly desired you to remain in the wizarding world."

Hermione considered, sitting cross-legged like a five-year-old on the bed. "Yes, I would go back to Hogwarts once I realized it was a magical illness. St. Mungo's could diagnose the geas, but I wouldn't go to them right off." Snape nodded. "And it would be worse than dragon pox - no way to doctor it. I couldn't remain in the Muggle world."

Snape was silent, and she followed his lead, pressing her lips together tightly around each mouthful of food. There seemed to be very little more to say. When she got up to wash her hands, she heard his voice drift into the bathroom behind her. 

"Try to keep yourself from dreaming. You might be better off if you do not attempt to sleep."

She dried her hands on the towel, stared at her face in the mirror. It was regular, no cheekbones to speak of and a pert nose, eyes staring out from under dark brows. "Because I might not wake up, and you couldn't explain that away when we hit customs." _Do I look like this when I dream? Do I close my eyes - so? _

The frown on Snape's face insinuated itself into his tone. "Yes, Miss Granger. Although I was attempting some tact."

"I'm a Gryffindor," she replied, watching her lips form the words. "I don't know what tact means."

He paused, then muttered. "Tact. Adroitness in dealing with people or circumstances; intuitive perception of the right thing to do or say. Oxford English Dictionary."

Hermione couldn't resist. "Not really straight out of the _dictionary_?"

"Not really, no."

"All right, then."

It was only later, after their joking exchange, that she began to feel the pull of the dreaming. When she was on the alert for it, sitting still and silent in the armchair, she could feel the memories creeping into the back of her mind and vying for her attention. She recited the times tables to distract herself - _Eleven times two is twenty-two. Eleven times three is thirty-three._

It was sunny outside that February day, startlingly enough. The Quidditch game was very close, and Ron waved down from his Keeper's position at Hermione, smiling past Cho Chang's shoulder. Her enchanted valentines - one from Ron and one from Harry - fluttered up from where she had stuffed them in her rucksack to hover by her face. Their wings fanned air on her cheeks.

"This next save's for you, Hermione!"

"Keep your eye on the _game_, Ron!" One of the hearts followed his broom as he dived after a just-thrown Quaffle, stretching into a starfish-and-stick to graze it with his fingertips and deflect it just enough. She jumped and cheered, the crowd erupting into happy screams. His pink face was just visible over their heads as the heart returned to her. He was beaming. "Go - go - _Gryffindor!_"

But she wasn't at a Quidditch game - she was at a hotel, and Ron was in Scotland, and she was across the sea. She shook her head: there was Professor Snape lying on the bed, expression forbidding even as he slept. _Eleven times four is forty-four -_

"_Do you know where Harry is?"_ Professor McGonagall's voice, that. Professor McGonagall, who had given her the vacuita and the geasa. That had happened already. "He's not in his bed and Ginny Weasley is having hysterics in the common room, some nonsense about the Dark Lord. _Where_ did they go?"

"I don't know." That was a lie. A damned lie, because she did know, but McGonagall - Minerva, now, wasn't she? - should know too, because it was so long ago that she asked that question. Why -?

Her head was muzzy, but her lips still formed the next problem: _Eleven times five is fifty five._ And of course it had already happened. All she was doing was remembering things, like she had promised she wouldn't. "I _am_ awake!" This time she was really saying it. Snape shifted and muttered. She stared at the carpet at the foot of the bed, willing herself to remain awake, until it swam in front of her eyes - until it formed Harry's illusory face in his coffin (because of course Fudge had been adamant on an open casket funeral, although no body was ever found), with bells ringing, tolling his death and Dumbledore's.

  


* * *

  


Later Hermione was told that she had sleep-walked through the airport and dreamed in the planes. She believed it. In any case, she never did remember the next day, spent traveling. She revived for a while in a hostel - or perhaps it was someone's house? Snape was talking with a tawny someone. Lupin? The lines of tension were clear and powerful in the room.

"Since you left ... frantic for wolfsbane," came Lupin's voice. It was her old professor, then. "Elspeth and I -"

Then Snape: "Elspeth Kneen? Hogwarts in 1990 - of Yorkshire?"

"It, ah, happened later." This was an unfamiliar person, female. Hermione struggled to open her eyes wider, but she had no control of her body. Strangely enough, it was not frightening. There was only an overwhelming lassitude that threatened to control her mind once more. And it did. She returned to her memory world, then, dreaming of church bells. They rang for Dumbledore's and Harry's funeral at St. Morwenna's cathedral - for there was a wizards' church, she found, mostly used for state occasions. People filed in. She hung behind, and was last, but there was a seat saved for her at the very front. A choir sang with magical amplification. It sounded as though a thousand angels were crying. It sounded as though heaven was falling. 

Hermione was a mess, of course, clammy handed and red eyed, clinging to Ron like a lifesaver once she finally made it to the forefront. The white stone and black clothing contrasted as Snape had at the New York hotel. That was to come later, of course. It was bright. The stained-glass windows moved and bowed their heads to the crowd. St. Morwenna, who inhabited the great circular window above the altar, held the service, speaking in a gravelly alto that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

"We are gathered here today to mourn the passing of Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter..."

When the memories finally released her she was lying in Hogwarts' hospital wing. Her eyes fell on Madam Pomfrey first and foremost, who was clucking like a mother hen over the state of her favorite student. Hermione had forgotten how much the teachers all appreciated her - and they all had survived except Dumbledore, thanks to Harry's Gryffindor heroics. "Oh, good, I was expecting you'd come around. Most of the time I wouldn't contradict Minerva on anything, but a geas - and Snape did light into her so, but she wouldn't say a thing till you were awake. Feeling better?"

Fortified with tea and food, Hermione did feel better. She suspected, though, that it had more to do with her location than anything. The hospital wing was as spartan as ever. She could almost swear she was in second year again - the year she spent almost entirely there amidst the clean white bedding. There was something in the smell of the air that made it home, more even than the old house she'd left to be sold. As she dressed in fresh black robes and the clothes she'd come in - now laundered, thanks to the efficiency of the house-elves - she reveled in it. Her head was clearer than it had been in months, her melancholy mood lifted. The sun shone bright through the high slitted windows. It was a summer morning, and she was at Hogwarts. For all its negative associations, this place remained her own.

The happiness clamped down almost instantaneously when McGonagall appeared around the screen that shielded her bed from the main hospital area. "Hermione," she said, holding out her arms as though she expected a happy reunion of mentor and child. "I was so glad you'd returned -"

Hermione looked at her feet in their hospital slippers. They were fluffy and very periwinkle. She fingered her vacuita. "The geasa. Why? Suppose you tell me that first."

The elder woman bit her lip. It looked as though she might have drawn blood. Snape appeared behind her, back in robes, as batlike as before. He looked at Hermione in a way that might have been meant to encourage. "Because I was forced to," McGonagall finally said, crossing her arms uncomfortably. "And because... I'd hoped you'd be healed enough to hear this, when you found your way back to Hogwarts. Lord Snape has forced my hand."

She didn't have the leisure to question the_ Lord. _"Then he is a better friend than you. I thought you cared for me. I thought you trusted me."

"I do."

"Then tell me what forced you to put the geasa on me - geasa I can never break - geasa I'll have to live with for the rest of my life." She did not raise her voice, but instead simply let the words speak for themselves, and that they did. The headmistress lowered her eyes and took a deep breath before she began to speak. 

END PART 3

Because so many people asked: yes, vacuitas will be addressed in Chapter 4, and yes, they are my own creation. A geas, plural geasa, is a magical obligation, prohibition or taboo in Celtic mythologies usually imposed on magical or sacred people. To break a geas goes against nature and therefore is often fatal or at least very dangerous. Each geas is unique and appropriate to the person it is imposed on, and often they are used by that person's enemy to bring them down. An example which might make this a little clearer: Cu Chullain had two geasa, to never eat dog meat and to sample all food being prepared by the side of the road. This was appropriate because his name meant "hound of Cullain," so if he ate dog meat it would be a type of cannibalism. In order to destroy him, his enemy prepared dog meat by the side of the road where he was walking, and he was forced to break one or the other geasa. 


	4. A Sea Of Troubles

**Part 4. A Sea Of Troubles.**

"It is rather complicated - my reasoning, that is. I suppose I should begin from the beginning. When Harry and Ron Weasley -" McGonagall's voice caught a little on _Harry. _"When they disappeared, and Ginny Weasley was having hysterics in the Common Room, I thought to come to you right away. Of course I knew that they had said something to you, even though you lied about it, especially when I tried to contact Albus and he wasn't in his offices.

"We were all so busy after Ronald returned that I didn't notice that you were gone for simply hours. When I did I knew, of course, and I left Professor Sprout and Madam Pomfrey to keep order in the castle. You were long gone by then, Severus; I didn't know that yet, though. In any case, I went to the glade in the Forbidden Forest where Ronald said the duel took place, and there I found you. You were utterly incoherent. I am afraid - I am afraid you had been subjected to _Cruciatus_ at least once. I was afraid, at the time, that you might end up as little more than the poor Longbottoms.

"In any case, I patched you up enough get back to the castle and used the internal Floo to get you to my rooms. I had no choice but to do a temporary memory charm, as you were going into backshocks and I had to calm you down - you do know what backshocks are, of course?"

"When a wizard draws on too much of their power in a moment of emotional distress, they can be possessed by it," Hermione supplied. "But I still don't remember it -"

"Listen and I will tell you why. I didn't know, then, what had happened. All I knew was that I couldn't suppress a memory so potent for long, so I did my best on the past few hours. Once you were calm, the symptoms of backshock went away almost immediately. No more incoherence, no more spasms, no more dry heaves. It was a relatively simple matter to fix you up from the physical effects of _Cruciatus_ and get you to sleep. You were fine, then, for the next few weeks. I believe you were told that you had collapsed from the strain.

"The memory charm wasn't going to last forever, though, and Ronald was displaying signs of severe emotional distress. So I began researching vacuitas. As you know, they're often used at St. Mungo's. It was easy enough to find out how they work: a piece of jewelry is enchanted so that one can transfer the emotional burden of one's memories into it. Then the jewelry is given to a trusted friend, and spells are woven to bind it to them. The friend experiences heightened emotional tension, and the subject whose mind was altered only experiences those memories in a detached fashion from then on.

"I knew the memory of whatever had happened that day was returning when I saw you at the funeral, and there was not much time to lose. I approached you and Ronald about using a vacuita so that Ronald might be an Unspeakable. I didn't tell you that I was also planning to bind your memories into the vacuita. You see, in my research I had come upon a rare case in which a memory was absolutely suppressed by being bound into an object. I couldn't remove Ron's memories of the battle with the Dark Lord; he needed them to be an Unspeakable, and in any case he would never consent to it. All I could do was craft him a vacuita. But you - ah, that was a different case.

"You were not quite right after Harry's funeral. Ronald spoke to me about his fear that you would do something drastic. So I decided to bind the memory of those hours into the same necklace that had been enchanted to form the vacuita. In order to create the vacuita, you both had to be placed in a dreamless sleep. As soon as you had taken the potion and were quite still, I removed the memory charm from you. Then I must admit I used a rather questionable spell to bring your memory of the night after Harry died to light, and place it in a Pensieve.

"As you know, Pensieves merely make a duplicate of the memory one has; they don't take it away. You were very accepting of my placing the charm on you in the first place, by the way - but then, by then you were so disaffected and strange that one can't be sure if you really meant a word you said. You followed my directions, and as soon as you were asleep, I looked in the Pensieve."

Hermione started. "Do you still have it? Can I - I lost that memory, but -"

"I won't let you look in it. I destroyed it. You will have to take my word." The frown this elicited brought a cajoling tone into McGonagall's voice. "Hermione, child, you must believe I did this all for you - for your safety, for your health. If I had meant you harm, I wouldn't tell you about it now." The girl was silent, and McGonagall pressed on, as though by explaining herself she could absolve herself of all blame. "In it, you went to the site of the duel. There were only two burnt-out spots where Harry and Voldemort had stood, and some blood on the ground because of Albus.

"You cried. Suddenly, from behind a tree, Harry appeared. As he came closer one could see his scar was gone. He was untouched, not hurt a bit, and you ran towards him and hugged him.

"And then he put _Cruciatus_ on you.

"It went on and on and on, far past the limits of any human endurance. You can't feel pain in a Pensieve, but it jumped about, like you had fainted and revived many times. Finally he took it off for good. You crawled away and curled up in a ball. Before he left, however, he bent over you and told you, 'Little Mudblood, you will never be able to threaten me again.' I could hear you screaming at him, but the pensieve blacked out then; I suppose you must have tried to curse him without a wand, and that caused the backshock.

"I knew, then, that the Dark Lord was not dead, but I had no idea where to begin looking. If he had truly married his soul to Harry's body, he could easily be anywhere; there is no better disguise than being thought dead. People refuse to believe it. I finished the vacuita, but as a safeguard, I tied the geasa into it. You were asleep most of the day; there was plenty of time. I feared for your life, Hermione. I need you at Hogwarts, and you need Hogwarts to be safe from the Dark Lord. And you could never, never remove the vacuita, or you and Ronald might not be able to recover from the rush of memory."

Snape, who Hermione had forgotten about, lashed out angrily. His face was filled with controlled fury. "Minerva, you _fool!_ The geasa could have killed her. Didn't you expect that by tying them into the vacuita, they would use the vacuita to enforce her restrictions? She's been pulled into those damaging memories for the past three months!"

McGonagall was silent, shocked. "I never expected them to do that," she began slowly and in her primmest manner. "I have always agreed with the theory that geasa are no more than extremely complex magic, created by some Celtic witch -"

"But nobody _knows._ You're a sorry replacement for Albus, Minerva, if you didn't think of that. Magical interactions are irregular! We say we know the theory, but it's all our imaginations really, and you know that as well as I."

"It doesn't matter now," Hermione cut in. "I think - I think I'd like to be alone, please. And I'd like to stay in Gryffindor Tower, if you don't mind." She smiled politely at both of them, knowing that it didn't reach her eyes, and stood.

"The password is 'silver bells.' I'm in Albus' office, now, and my password is 'Morwenstow.' Come visit me soon. I'm sure you have much to say."

"Maybe I will." She had no intention of doing so, of course. "Thank you. It's a little overwhelming." And with that she left, striding off in a way that made her appear much more confident than she felt.

One might have expected Hermione to feel lost and frightened. Her own mind had been revealed to be fallible, her thoughts and world view incorrect. Professor McGonagall had known about Lord Voldemort and not warned her, not trusted her that far - but it was all immaterial. Away from McGonagall, it was much easier to ignore what was occurring outside the castle's walls - and what had once happened within them. She was still caught up in the feeling of _oneness_ that came from being within the castle, the removal of that nagging worry that lived in the back of her mind.

The Fat Friar and Nearly Headless Nick swooped in front of her, obviously happy to see her again, but besides that, the castle seemed to be deserted. The portraits muttered as she passed, but didn't call out to her. Many of them were out of their frames. The Fat Lady, however, was still there, with several friends visiting her, and Hermione was let in quite quickly. In fact, she wasn't sure if the portrait had even recognized her. 

The Gryffindor common room was another matter entirely. She moved through it as quickly as possible, climbing the twisting stairs to the dormitory she'd occupied for seven years. Lavender and Parvati were no longer here, though, and the room was eerily quiet as she stared at it from the doorway. The four-poster beds stared back at her, solid, immovable.

This was no longer neutral ground. Instead it was a place of the past, a place filled with the sort of ghost that doesn't move or talk except in your own mind. There, Ginny helped her zip the back of her sky-blue gown, murmuring how beautiful she looked; there, they all sat on the floor at the feet of their beds, praying that this not be a night when the Death Eaters gained another floor. But these images did not trouble her, or if they did, it was only for a moment. Hermione ran a hand over her face and entered. Today she had the luxury of telling those memories to go away, and she was grateful for it.

Her things had been brought up by the house-elves, and in short order she had decided that there was nothing she wished to do in Gryffindor Tower. Every inch of the place was known to her; long confinement will do that to you. Instead of going over it all and wallowing in the way it was exactly the same, she found her way out of it and headed towards the library. She had some research on geasa to do.

  
  
  
  
It was very late in the day when Hermione heard Snape's footsteps echo down the long corridors the library shelves formed. She had forgotten the sheer joy of researching, how it leads first down one path then another, how she would so often take ridiculous leaps - she would pick up a book on Rowena Ravenclaw's early life and end up studying the mating habits of Kappas. It was even better without Madam Pince hovering and threatening, worried about the state of the books.

"I thought I'd find you here. Have you had plenty of time to digest it all?"

The voice wasn't unwelcome, and she replied in a friendly tone. "Yes. I've been looking into geasa..." Glancing down at the table, she realized that her entire stack of books regarded the life and times of Saint Morwenna. "I got sidetracked."

Snape smiled thinly. "The bane of all intellectually-minded people - though it usually hits Ravenclaws the hardest." He paused, seating himself across from her. She knew he intended her to explain exactly how she was feeling. She'd gotten this sort of silence from people rather often over the past few months. But as she drew breath to make up a completely idiotic answer, he spoke again.

"So the Dark Lord is in the world once more, and we three are the only ones who know."

"On our side."

"If we have a side, yes. But if Minerva knew and told no-one, I must suspect her. She knew Tom Riddle very well, before you or even I was born. Perhaps too well." His inflections were filled with subtleties in the most Slytherin of manners, implying his distrust of McGonagall, suggesting his hatred of the Dark Lord, insinuating his disdain for the idea of a concretely black-and-white conflict. "She could be loyal to him and never know it, so deep does the conditioning go."

It was almost hard to swallow. Almost, but not quite. Snape's long, white hands played with a page from the open book between them. Hermione watched, intrigued and repelled by the thought that the Dark Lord's hands must have looked very like Snape's.

"Does it still burn you? The Dark Mark, I mean." The words slipped out between her teeth, though she tried to bite them back - why, she didn't know. There was surely no need for pleasantries with this man.

His expression never changed. "Recently, once. In Sacramento. But I wouldn't think you'd like to discuss that time of your life, now that you're back here." The voice that issued from him was cool and steady. She was not fooled.

"It doesn't bother me. I was less complicated, then. You learn new things about yourself every day."

One eyebrow rose - again. What a habit! "But some are harder to swallow than others?"

"Yeah. But stranger things have happened. At least now..." Her voice trailed away, then picked back up. "Is it so treasonous, to want to forget Harry and Ron?"

"I would say forgetting them's an excellent idea, but that may be colored more by my judgement of those two people in particular than by any moral opinion."

"I suppose. But I'm mostly thankful for coming here because I don't have to look at them any more. The past few days I've been seeing their faces constantly, when I was dreaming and when I wasn't too. In a crowd I see him. I look again and it's just another dark-haired boy. And then the memories, and I'm just relieved they're _gone_." She turned her eyes down and rubbed at the vacuita that still hung around her neck. "But they're all here, aren't they?"

"They are, at that."

Hermione smiled broadly, but tears were clearly brimming in her eyes. "But you see, the vacuita holds all that's left of Harry, and I'd do anything to give it away."

"Yes, but you can't give away what you are, Miss Granger. Our memories are a great deal of our selves."

Shamed, she wiped her eyes as covertly as she could and stood. She had been afraid of bursting with her emotions; this was just as bad, in its own way. "Sorry. I haven't - well." Making to leave, she heard Snape's voice come drifting after her.

"If you were wondering, Minerva sent me. She needs you for a spell."

"Minerva can talk to me herself. It's six o'clock. I expect we'll be seeing each other at table," Hermione shot back, and stalked off to dinner.

  
  
  
  
The Great Hall was utterly empty; there weren't even any tables in it. Hermione found herself quite at a loss for words. She walked all the way up to the dais where the Head Table normally stood before she saw Dobby, standing by the exit Professor Snape always used. "Dobby is thinking that Miss Hermione wishes her dinner," he said, bowing in a funny way and gesturing to the door. "The masters is eating in the antechamber."

_Spew,_ she thought. _Society for the Protection of Elfish Welfare, that was it._ It had grown fuzzy in the intervening years. _I was a little crusader._

"I'm glad to see you," McGonagall said, betraying herself with her words. She felt guilty. 

"I'm glad you're glad," she responded. "But don't - I know you'd like to be forgiven. You tell me you did these things to me, but I can't feel them, and I don't know if it really was for my own good. I'm not angry with you, but I can't trust you anymore."

"You trust me by staying in this castle."

Hermione smiled. "You think I haven't read _Hogwarts: A History_? You know I have. Don't act as though I'm a fool. The North Tower of Hogwarts provides sanctuary to all those who seek it. If I truly believed you would hurt me, I would retreat there. Besides, I haven't much choice about staying here."

McGonagall smiled and looked down. "I knew you knew. It was our plan, after all, should the next layer of defenses be breached. The catacombs and the tower."

In silence they seated themselves, for McGonagall had been standing by the fireplace, talking with one of the many portraits that hung the walls even here. There were five plates set out - Hermione, McGonagall, Snape, Madame Pomfrey, and one of the other teachers. On each plate was a different design, obviously tuned to personality and preferences, probably one of Dumbledore's ideas. Snape's had a snake and a coat of arms on it that Hermione couldn't quite read, McGonagall's the Gryffindor crest with _Veni, Vidi, Vici_ printed below it, Madam Pomfrey's a golden caduceus. Her own plate, was decorated with an image of a sleeping lion. _How appropriate. _The last plate was blank.

"I assume Severus told you that I needed your help for a spell?"

"Actually, I told him that you should tell me what it is you need me for."

"A very Gryffindor thing to do. I'm not sure if anyone's told you - Remus Lupin is to be married next week to a young woman of a very eminent family. He requested that you aid me in the casting of certain protective spells."

Hermione was a little taken aback. She had never been close with Professor Lupin - she had hardly spoken with him since she was thirteen - but even so, she knew what he must have had to overcome. He was probably the first werewolf to be married in history. "Is she..."

"Struck with the sin of Lycaos? Yes. Elspeth was bitten after the Dark Lord called Dark creatures to him. Remus helped her adjust." 

_Elspeth_ - the girl she had seen, faintly, through her geas-induced haze. "You need me to play the part of the Maid?"

"Remus requested you."

"Then I can hardly refuse, can I? I'm sure Sirius will approve."

"You'll be expected to attend the ceremony to seal the spell, and Ron Weasley will be there." It was clear that McGonagall knew of the owls she had turned back to Scotland time and again. Before she could elaborate, though, a door opened - it had previously been hidden by clever carving, so it matched the wainscoting - and Snape entered, followed by a very old woman. She was as wrinkled as a walnut's shell and approximately the same color, her white hair standing stark against her tanned face. Her cane appeared to be her wand, enlarged into a smooth stick of ebony. "Ah. Hermione, I must introduce you to Dame Betsey Kneen, most recently known as Professor Sibyll Trelawney."

She nearly fell off her chair. _Polyjuice? But how?_ The old woman was grinning from ear to ear, clearly pleased with the reaction she was getting. "Not many of my old students have seen me as who I truly am. You're one of the few, child, and don't forget it. Minerva, Poppy asked me to tell you she was taking supper in her rooms."

"Betsey has been staying with us ever since the first rise of the Dark Lord," the Transfigurations mistress continued, as though Kneen hadn't spoken. "For most of that time she's been our Divination teacher, although she started off with a run of Defense Against the Dark Arts. People remember a Defense teacher, though. Divination... well, she does her best to discourage them."

The old woman held no resemblance to Professor Trelawney. She was fairly spry, navigating the room with no aid from Snape, but she looked more like someone's ancient maiden aunt than anything. The only hint was the faint, lingering scent of patchouli that surrounded her. "I wouldn't have expected it. So are you _truly_ a Diviner?" 

"No less than I ever was, Miss Granger. Kindly keep me to yourself, as it were. Enough time's been spent talking about me as it is - _eat._" At that word, food appeared on their plates, comfort food that reminded Hermione of why she had always relished mealtimes at Hogwarts. They ate in silence, for a moment, before McGonagall began making small talk with Kneen.

"So this is our maid, Minerva?" the crone asked; it was obvious that if she was involved in the protective spellcasting for Lupin's wedding, she would be taking the oldest position. "I hold with the mundane aspect of her - but I think she's loosened up a bit since she was thirteen. She'll serve wonderfully." 


	5. In Medias Res

**Part 5. In Medias Res.**

  
Hermione realized it was August twentieth when she woke up that next morning and looked at the heading for the Daily Prophet. Only ten days before school would begin and children would fill the halls of Hogwarts once more! But she didn't dwell on it, because then her eyes fell on the headline.

HARRY POTTER MURDERS NINETEEN IN U.S.

She tore out of Gryffindor Tower, still in a dressing gown the house-elves had provided. McGonagall's words haunted her: _Harry appeared ... then he put _Cruciatus_ on you. Harry..._

_Voldemort._

"Severus Snape called for you," the Fat Lady called after her, looking very affronted at being slammed closed. "He's behind the portrait of Jeanne d'Arc -"

The portrait was at the base of the North Tower, she knew, although she hadn't been there since she had been in Trelawney's Divination class. Her bare feet slapped on the cold stone of the corridors, chafing as she ran up and down stairs as fast as possible. The castle had always loved her, and it hastened her on her journey: no staircases swung away from her now. The corridors were still eerily silent as she approached the painting.

"J'informerai Snape que vous êtes arrivés."

"Merci," Hermione answered after a pause as she searched for the correct French word, her mind still back on the Daily Prophet. 

Snape only poked his head out of the swinging door the portrait made, his hands wrapping around the gilt frame - an odd habit. "Miss Granger."

"Did you see -"

He made a small noiseof frustration. "Yes, I saw the Prophet. It's a pity Potter's name is being so sullied. I hardly know what I shall do." His voice was sarcastic. "Oh, wait, I do. I shall worry about the Dark Lord rising again and not about my old friend Potter, who is almost certainly dead."

Clenching her teeth, Hermione grabbed the portrait before he could shut it. "No, Prof - Snape." It wasn't right to call him 'professor' anymore, and she'd refuse to anyway, even if he _was_ returning to form. "I wasn't worried about Harry's reputation. He hasn't any use for it now. But this means You-Know-Who is inhabiting Harry's body for sure, and if he's been found out, don't you think he'll be leaving Sacramento?"

"You have a point, but he could be at any one of the Malfoy properties, even assuming Malfoy is his only supporter - and that seems most likely, as I recall they owned a house in California," Snape retorted. "They've land in Japan, Canada, France, Bulgaria, Germany, not to mention the British Isles. We've no idea where he's gone." 

"Then we haven't a chance?"

He gave a crooked smile that might have been a smirk. "As long as Hogwarts is standing, we've a chance. You stood down Lord Voldemort. What have you to be afraid of?" He looked pointedly at where her hands gripped the gilt frame, then glanced up and down, making her acutely aware of her disheveled appearance. "You remind me. The headmistress has asked me to accompany you to pick up some of the instruments necessary for Lupin's wedding. We shall meet in the Great Hall at nine, I think."

  
  
  
  
Nine in the morning saw Hermione far better dressed, her hair combed and behaving for once. The Great Hall was sunny and bright, echoing the sky above; Snape looked like a large black shadow as he leaned against the staff table. "Hurry up. We haven't all day. The Floo is connected to the great fireplace only for an hour, so that we might get the items you need - a pair of pokers and tongs made specially for the occasion, I believe. Minerva ordered them from a magical blacksmith in North Yorkshire. Enunciate 'Ashford's Smithy' quite clearly, please." Only then did she notice the fire roaring in the north wall of the Great Hall, a fire she hadn't seen burning since the invasion. 

She wouldn't think of it. She refused to. Instead, she took a pinch of Floo powder from the pouch he offered her and threw it into the purple flames.

"Ashford's Smithy."

Having not used the Floo network in some time, Hermione almost forgot to tuck her elbows in, and when she stumbled out into a small, crowded room she was covered in soot. She coughed and muttered a cleansing charm before taking a good look at her surroundings. She had never been in a blacksmith's before, and it was strange to see a hammer floating in the air, beating silver into shapes on an anvil. Other tools floated about the room, too, and many fires burned, giving it a strong smoky smell and making the air quite hot. A man stood by a workbench, holding a wand that looked ridiculously small compared to his massive arms.

"You'll be the maid who needs the pokers and tongs," he said, seeing that she wasn't about to speak.

"Yes, I think so." 

Snape stepped out of the fireplace behind her and immediately assessed the situation. "Miss Granger is the one they picked for the maid, Ashford," he cut in. "Where are the - things? I can't touch them, or I'd have simply gotten them myself."

"Over there, sir," the blacksmith replied. They were leaning against the far wall, two intricately worked iron pokers and a pair of long tongs. "I made them on the regular pattern, as I hadn't any other instructions. Nobody's touched them since they came out of the fire, and they've the very best charms laid on them. I guarantee that they'll work well in your protection spell."

"I'll tell Minerva that if she complains," Hermione offered, picking her way gingerly through the maze of equipment to lift the heavy things and pull them after her towards the fireplace.

"Thank you."

Snape glanced around as though he owned the shop, standing very still before the Floo-networked fire. "Business doing well?"

"About the same. You haven't been in for cauldrons much, and the new Potions teacher seems to use all ready-mades, but the regulars are mostly still regular and -"

A short, pudgy little man burst in through the door, which was situated next to the fireplace. He was out of breath, huffing and puffing, and his wand was drawn. Hermione dropped her burden in surprise.

"Lord Snape! Thank heavens. I saw on the village map that you were here - Lord Malfoy has arrived to see you! He's waiting in the blue room now, wouldn't take that you were out of the country for an answer."

Hermione muttered, "_Lord_ Snape?" the very instant Snape exclaimed "_Malfoy_?" He strode to the door, which the short man held open for him, and Hermione was right on his heels. "What does he want?"

"Only to speak with you, as far as I can tell. But -"

"Lord Snape?" Hermione repeated.

"Yes, that's who I am when I'm at home. Please try to speak intelligently. You are walking through the village of Snape, passing Snape Beck on your right, headed for Snape Castle. It would naturally follow that there must be a Lord Snape, and as my surname happens to be Snape one might logically conclude that I am he. Bunter, what exactly did he say?"

She looked around her. They had exited what appeared to be a very quaint Muggle cottage and were following a narrow street through a village, Snape and Bunter pacing nervously ahead of her. The sun shone down on whitewashed buildings, giving everything a glow that made it feel quite summery. Ahead loomed a fine Elizabethan castle, complete with turrets and battlements, though parts were somewhat decrepit. Rather than enter through the main door, they circled around and went through a servants' entrance. "Muggles use the main door. They think they're the only inhabitants, of course," Bunter said, glancing over his shoulder. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name; I was in such a fluster -"

"Hermione Granger," a smooth voice came from the hallway to their left. "What a surprise to see you here, in Professor Snape's home."

It took all Hermione's willpower to not say something very scathing, but something told her to keep silent, at least until she knew what Snape was planning. _A Death Eater - here - one of the Death Eaters at Hogwarts, one of the ones who got away - !_

"Ah, Draco! What brings you to my village?" Snape asked loudly. Then, under his breath, he instructed Hermione: "Play along and don't be Gryffindor."

"Business, as usual. I could ask the same of the Mudblood, here, but obviously she's your guest."

The older man's eyes glinted hard and beetle-black in the light of the torches that lined the hall. "You always detested Miss Granger, didn't you? It makes no matter. She is intelligent and she is ours. The Dark Lord, after all, had a Muggle father."

"Who he denounced."

"As I denounce my parents," Hermione injected. "They're dead, in any case, and good riddance." The words nearly stuck in her throat. Malfoy was as slim and lithe as ever, his hair slicked down and his broad shoulders not quite grown into yet. She could still see his mouth framing phrases: _Mudblood. My master will do for you and your friends._

In one hateful moment, she could see Snape speaking too: _I see no difference._ She bit her tongue hard enough to draw blood, forcing the images from her mind.

Snape's voice was all calm judgement. "Come, Draco, sit down. We'll talk this over. You know I've done my best for our master, but I'd my own skin to think about. Bunter - you're dismissed."

"I would have done the same," Malfoy admitted, following Snape. They walked in a line, Hermione last, to a room at the end of the very long hall. "But you should have gotten out earlier, rejected the old man as soon as you heard plans of the siege. You let us down badly." The room was all in dark blue, its large windows (magical, perhaps, Hermione thought; she hadn't seen any on their way in) looking eastward, over the village. The faint scent of summer roses wafted in on the morning breeze, a counterpoint to the conversation.

"I saw the Daily Prophet. Am I right in assuming...?"

A slow smile broke his face. "Yes. He has returned - and how, in a body belonging to his worst enemy! _Irony_ isn't the word for it; there has to be something stronger."

"Good," Hermione said, putting what might have been too much venom into her voice. She found it necessary to explain. "It's - ah - an attractive body. Quite economical of him." 

"I suppose," he responded. "Why your change of heart, Granger?"

"All those deaths, for what? Ron gets me saddled with this vacuita," she began, gesturing to it and warming to her subject. "_My_ needs don't count for anything. Harry's clever little Mudblood friend, that's all I am to them. They don't even truly value my intelligence. And I know the Dark Lord will value that much at least. He'll know how stupid it would be to throw me away, even if I have got dirty blood."

"Or I suppose it could be just because Snape here made you an offer you can't refuse," Malfoy said, lazily. "What - bang him and join us, and he'll keep you up in style? Have you two been off banging like bunnies these past three months? Is that why nobody's been able to contact you?"

Hermione didn't know what to respond to first. Fortunately, Snape had a comeback. "Sadly, that isn't the case. I haven't been brave enough to try anything. Even if she's a Gryffindor Mudblood witch, she's a powerful Gryffindor Mudblood witch. She's to be the Maid in Lupin's wedding - you remember, the werewolf? - and she won't want to jeopardize that. You might get farther, though, Draco. If you do, you can have her with my blessing as your godfather."

"Afraid I'm not one to try." He rearranged himself on the love seat he was stretched out on. "I'll speak with our master -"

His voice echoed in and out, finally fading into nothingness, as the room wavered. _Not already, I've barely been away an hour!_ Her descent into memory was inexorable. The smell of roses lingered, but the blue faded into washed-out grays, and it was a March day, windy and cold. It was the first time Hermione had felt the wind since they were besieged. Harry and Ron milled about near her, poking at things in the tiny tower room they had discovered, but she paid no attention. They were in what seemed to be the absolute top of Gryffindor Tower, a place nobody had shown them before, and the window was open and no wards had been triggered. They were safe, for the moment, even with the fresh air rushing in. Her heart thrilled to the idea of the thaw. Far, far below, at the base of the tower, she could see the bright specks of daffodils. A beetle alit on the sash, and she flicked it away.

"Looking at the daffy-down-dillys?" Ron asked good-naturedly. "I wish you'd get off that window ledge, though. I know it's deep set, but I'm afraid you'll fall - "

"My magic'd keep me safe, you know that," she said, but she climbed back in anyway. "I wish we could be out there again. I never thought I'd miss the outdoors, but it's spring, and we're not seeing it."

Harry stared out the window opposite them; the room was circular. "To fly again. Play Quidditch." He sighed, and his whole demeanor changed. "I want you two to promise me something. Muggles do this thing called 'blood brothers,' and I was thinking -"

"There's some wonderful practical reasons to do that!" Hermione responded excitedly, not waiting for him to finish. "It makes us siblings in the eyes of magic if it's done right, so -" Even through the memory she could feel her face drain. "Blood brothers makes you siblings in the eyes of magic - so Harry, you and You-Know-Who -"

Ron looked horrified.

"I figured that out," Harry said. "And I figure I need some really _good_ siblings to balance it out. So." He pulled a pocket knife, his Christmas present from Ron, from where his wand was usually holstered. "What do you say?"

"I'll go with it," Ron replied. 

"Okay..." Hermione was less than enthusiastic about getting her hand cut.

"Oh, buck up, you've been learning all those healing charms from Madam Pomfrey. You'll put us right in an instant."

She laughed. "Tell me it'll help me study and I'll do anything. All right. Harry - ah, you do the honors."

In fact, it barely hurt at all, the knife was so sharp. In turn they grasped each others' hands, pressing hard to make sure the blood ran together. It coursed hot over Hermione's wrist, running into her sleeve and staining it. She didn't let go. It would have offended Harry, she had thought at the time. Maybe, though, there was another force at work - becoming blood brothers (or 'blood siblings,' as she later insisted it should be called) was not something you stopped halfway through. 

When they were finished she healed each of their hands, hers last, and removed the stain from her shirt. It seemed whiter than before when she was finished. Harry and Ron were quite keen on finding out if they were really brothers, so she closed the shutters and followed them down into the main rooms of Gryffindor Tower, hoping they wouldn't tear her room apart looking for the book the spell to show your relatives was in. 

She never went back to that secret tower room again. Instead of meeting the Gryffindor Common Room when she climbed down the ladder, Hermione found herself climbing back into her own body, which lay stretched out on the sofa of the blue room at Snape Castle. She reanimated slowly, moving her toes and fingers first, then eyelids and arms, head and legs. Finally she stared up at the ceiling and wondered if Snape and Malfoy were still in the room.

"Does she do this often?" Malfoy's voice said, answering her question. 

"No, I'm afraid I've been having a bad reaction to a potion I took," Hermione responded, sitting up and letting the room snap back into focus from the blurry mass it had been. "I'm afraid Snape's losing his touch. I feel like I'm going to be sick."

"If you're ill, Granger, I'd better leave," he said abruptly. "It's been pleasant. I'll be in touch."

Snape stood to shake Malfoy's hand. "I'll be here for the next week or so, of course."

"Of course. Goodbye, Granger. Goodbye, Snape."

"Goodbye - Draco," Hermione replied. 

  
  
  
As soon as Malfoy was gone, presumably being shown out by Bunter, she put her face in her hands and pretended she couldn't feel the vacuita hanging around her neck. "The geas isn't supposed to kick in so soon, is it? No, never mind. It isn't. Otherwise Minerva wouldn't have sent me here."

"She believed you'd only be gone an hour," Snape said, standing and pacing the length of the room. "And now the Floo has been disconnected. There's nothing to do but send an owl to them to reconnect Hogwarts tomorrow morning and hope they get it in time to do it overnight."

There were worse things, of course, than spending a day in Snape Castle, especially after Hermione was introduced to its library. There were books of every manner and persuasion, the tall shelves lit by hundreds of hovering candles, almost like something out of Hogwarts - but the texts were far more advanced. She gathered books on geasa and vacuita, reading the passages she particularly wanted to remember aloud to herself, but by far the most interesting part of the day was reading a very thin book of marriage and childhood protection spells. The very first one was what which she would perform with the help of McGonagall and Professor Trelawney - or rather Dame Betsey Kneen.

The incantation of the most recently written London-specific marriage protection spell is well known to many children, as its derivation is from a nursery rhyme common in Muggle London. However, by acting out parts of the rhyme throughout the marriage preparations and ceremony, a spell is cemented at the moment the vows are said - a powerful spell that will help the marriage last, prevent thievery from the couple for their first thirty days of married life, increase fertility, and protect against Dark influences in the minds of the married. Furthermore, certain child protection spells may not be used without this or a similar marriage protection spell having been placed on the marriage; this is one reason why illegitimate children are at such a disadvantage in the wizarding world.

To perform the spell, the marriage must be performed in one of the cathedrals named, preferably St. Morwenna's in Diagon Alley.   
  
The spell passed into a bulleted list of things the Maid, Mother and Crone must do. Hermione skimmed it, skipping down the page.

The incantation, which is to be said by the Maid, the Mother and the Crone before they enter the cathedral, is as follows.

_Gay go up, and gay go down to ring the bells of London Town   
Bull's eyes and targets say the bells of St. Marg'ret's   
Brickbats and tiles say the bells of St. Giles'   
Oranges and lemons say the bells of St. Clement's   
Old shoes and slippers say the bells of St. Peter's   
Two sticks and an apple say the bells at Whitechapel   
Old Father Baldpate, say the slow bells at Aldgate   
Maids in white aprons say the bells at St Catherine's   
Pokers and tongs say the bells of St. John's   
Kettles and pans say the bells of St. Anne's   
You owe me five farthings say the bells of St. Martin's   
When will you pay me? Say the bells at Old Bailey   
When I grow rich, say the bells at Shoreditch   
Pray, when will that be? Say the bells of Stepney   
I do not know, says the great bell at Bow  
You're naught but a con, say the bells at Diagon  
Then I shall burn, say the bells at Knockturn.   
Here comes a candle to light you to bed;  
Here comes a chopper to chop off your head._

Hermione read through lunch. She learned that the spell had been developed by a group of parents wanting to make living with their offspring a little easier; she read about the child protection spell which could only be cast if the marriage had been protected from the start; she discovered the secret words that could negate the spell, if said at the right moment, and how to prevent them from being said. Once, she thought she felt herself begin to shift, but she held the vacuita tightly closed and forced herself to focus on the words marching before her eyes, and nothing came of it. Eventually, the light shifted and she sat up. It was early evening.

Instead of calling the house-elf or Bunter with the bell that hung by the door, she stood and stretched and went to explore. The feeling of not-quite-wholeness was back, but not strong. Leaving the library, she found herself in the main corridor once more. As she walked down the hall she peeked into each room in turn: the blue room they had met with Malfoy in, a formal dining room, a bathroom all in sage and ivory. At last she came to the doors she had particularly been wondering about, great ebony double doors with ivory handles, inlaid with gold. They were not just rich, as the other rooms had been, but palatial. Pushing as hard as she could, she opened one just enough to slip through.

It shut behind her noiselessly. The room seemed cavernous. She stood on a dais with marble steps descending to a great dance floor. Above, the ceiling was painted with still Muggle images of seraphim, great and terrible. Tall windows - and she _knew_ these were magical, because no Elizabethan castle would have featured windows like that - let in streams of light; the sun was just about to set. Dust particles hovered there, giving it an unreal, ancient air. Snape stood at the far side of the room, unaware of Hermione's presence, with a snowy owl perched on his shoulder.

As she crossed the floor to meet him, Snape startled, turning quickly. The owl took flight, leaving the room through what had seemed to be a solidly glassed window. "Oh, it's you," he said. "Come and read this. You've got us into quite a bind, Miss Granger."

The letter the owl had evidently been giving him was written on a sort of paper that was familiar to her and sealed with green and gold wax she had seen before. Opening it, the spidery hand told her who it was, even without glancing at the runes that ended the missive. Eihwaz and Uruz. Lord Voldemort.

"Young Malfoy tells me you are still loyal, and that your Mudblood is prepared to follow me," she read aloud. "You know, now, that I am not inhabiting my own physical form. Ask the Mudblood if it turns her stomach or if it adds to the appeal. I am quite curious.

"It does not stretch the imagination to think that this Granger might have seen the light. Though all her blood is tainted, she outdid even Malfoy in school, and that is no small praise. I am not so stupid as to take both of you in without a test of your loyalty. You betrayed me at Hogwarts when you retreated with the others. Yet I would have betrayed you at the slightest provocation. We both know alliances in the Serpents' Den are uneasy. It is true that Granger did not go with her little friends to destroy me. Perhaps she had her doubts even then. Perhaps, if you had been able to restrain them better, we would have had another turncoat from the old man's camp.

"The past does not matter. I have forsaken my Muggle father, and his power over me is long past. If your Mudblood will disown her parents as well, even though they are dead, and passes my tests, I will be well pleased. I would suggest that you cultivate the her further. I will send Malfoy to you soon with instructions." She frowned, giving the letter back to Snape and letting him burn it with a well-placed spell. "I thought he would never believe that lie. I'm a Muggle-born. _He_ killed my parents."

"He may not believe you. But I suspect the Dark Lord is in a tight position. It has only been three months, after all. He has had barely enough time to recover from that battle, much less gather support. Most of his Death Eaters are in Azkaban. Malfoy is young and foolish. You-Know-Who is not stupid. He knows you were cleverer than any of the Ravenclaws in school."

She crossed her arms. "And I'm not now, and he doesn't know that?" Snape's words were a backhanded compliment, and she was unsure how to react.

"Of course not, girl. You were little use for much of the time, but intelligence is not something that disappears at the drop of a hat." His voice was steady and hard. There were none of the usual theatrics there, only an earnestness she had not heard before. "We cannot leave here for long, and we cannot know what test the Dark Lord has for you. There is nothing to do but wait."

"I had enough of waiting during the siege, but I see no other course of action. And he has a test for you as well. I wonder which will be harder?"

Snape looked down at her piercingly. "I have been tested before, and you have not."

"That means nothing," she replied, staring back as challengingly as she could. 

He broke the gaze first, abruptly turning and heading back to the double doors. "Minerva asked me to tell you that Lupin's wedding is on the twenty-fifth. You'll need to go back to the smithy to collect your pokers and tongs later today."

There was something in those words that sparked a connection. Hermione had always been prone to flashes of inspiration, beginning when she was twelve and discovered the nature of the monster in the Chamber of Secrets. Now she wavered, mind racing, and called "Wait!" before she knew exactly what she was doing.

"Miss Granger?"

The pieces all fit. It wasn't sure, but all the same - "I have to go to the library. I think I just worked something out."

END PART 5  
  


**Just to note,** Bunter is Lord Peter Wimsey's manservant in Dorothy Sayers' mysteries. Full apologies to that character. My Bunter is significantly less composed and less efficient (Bunter-the-manservant would never do anything as ridiculous as huffing and puffing and running about). 


	6. Here Comes A Candle

**Part 6. Here Comes a Candle.**

  
"Come. We should not have talked here in the first place. I trust Bunter with my life, but I have not made a habit of informing him of my every opinion," Snape commented. For the first time, Hermione noticed the servant standing in front of the door.

"I only just arrived," said Bunter apologetically.

"Forgiven, but see it doesn't happen again. Granger, shall we go for a walk?"

"That would be fine," she replied, as Bunter left the room, holding the door open for them.

It was a fine day. The sun shone brightly as they left Snape Castle and walked, silently, along the roadside. Snape had offered her his arm, which she took more out of a sense of requirement than anything else. His clothes could be taken for Muggle, if he wasn't examined too closely; hers _were_ Muggle. They walked along the road looking for all the world like a pair of bored tourists to 'the picturesque, historic village of Snape.'

"If you're Lord Snape over all this, why were you in in the United States in the first place?" Hermione finally asked, uncomfortable with the quiet. 

"It doesn't exactly come with incredible wealth," he replied dryly. "I've the family home, which needs expensive magical upkeep, a trust fund and a style of living to uphold. The Muggles had their own Lord of Snape for many years, and the wizards had a different one - the wizards got the bad end of the deal. The family hasn't owned most of the land around here for a good many years now."

"But you enjoyed working?"

"As much as anyone enjoys their work. That is to say, I did not enjoy teaching at all. Research had its high points, but overall I would much rather not have to answer to any company."

_A fair answer,_ she thought, _and not one which invites further conversation._ But he spoke again.

"It's been a very mild summer. Pleasant, according to Bunter."

Hermione looked up at him. She was anxious to tell her grand idea, but also nervous (in case someone had thought of it long before). "Pray don't talk to me about the weather. Whenever someone talks to me about the weather, I get a sneaking suspicion that they mean to be talking about something else."

Snape looked quite surprised - perhaps he almost laughed, in that split second before he responded. "Wilde, Miss Granger?"

"It seemed appropriate."

"More appropriate than you know. This is locally known as the 'Lovers' Walk.' We will not meet anyone, and our presence here can be easily explained." He cast a simple anti eavesdropping charm, then offered his elbow to her once more. "And you are correct. I would much rather be talking about your sudden flash of inspiration. Were you visited by a vision? Did God speak?"

She absolutely refused to bridle at his sarcasm. "Nothing so melodramatic. No, what I was thinking was that Lily and James Potter were married in a traditional ceremony with all the trappings, weren't they?"

"Yes. Quite the to-do. I remember because there was an article on it in Witch Weekly, a longer one than was run when Narcissa deVries married Lucius Malfoy. The Malfoys were quite angry."

"And there were protection spells cast at Harry's birth, weren't there?"

"Only the ones cast on most children. There was a theory that Lily Potter used one of the protection spells to save her son, but nothing was ever proven."

"Then that confirms it," Hermione replied. "If those protection spells were never broken, they're still on Harry's body. There might be a way to use them against You-Know Who."

Snape stared straight ahead, walking on. His boots crunched the gravel; it was the sort of noise that fascinated Hermione, the sort of noise that is relegated to the background but that is quite important to an overall sensation. "You have a point," he finally ceded. "But they didn't help Potter when he was - inhabited."

"There are some aspects of the spells that aren't activated till a second part is cast, though. Anti-burning wards, that sort of thing." Hermione's voice was a little strained. He was walking far too quickly for her, though they were about the same height, and she had the unpleasant feeling that she was constantly about to fall behind. _Forget it,_ she thought. _He can just slow down._ But before she altered her pace he stopped and turned to face her, taking her hand. He bent in, putting his face very close to hers, whispering in her ear.

"The owl is flying over us now. It just went back for a second look."

"Can it - hear us? And report back?"

"I'd rather not take a chance, would you?"

His closeness was frightening - not disgusting, as she had thought it might have been, but it made her nervous. He straightened, putting one arm around her waist and pulling her to him. _Clever._ _If he angles his face right he'll be able to watch the sky._

Later, she had to admit to herself that one very juvenile part of her simply enjoyed being touched again. It had been months since anyone had touched her, apart from a handshake or a tap on the shoulder. There is a tendency to avoid a grieving person, when one does not know them very well. Nobody knew Hermione very well, after her friends and parents were dead. So she clasped her arms around Snape's neck and buried her face in his shoulder, letting him hold her.

"It's gone. Tomorrow we research protection spells. Now, I think it would be best that we be seen together in the village."

"All right." 

Snape set her from him and offered her his elbow again, leading her back the way they came. "I've grown used to having supper rather early, from Hogwarts. Shall we dine in the village?"

He led her to the Sober Robin Inn, a staid little building out behind a cottage on the outskirts of the village. "Wizards and Witches Only Since 1823," the motto beneath the sign read. While she expected it to be something like the Leaky Cauldron from the name and the outward appearance, in fact it was much more modern. Someone who sounded like Bing Crosby sang in the background - but Bing Crosby wasn't a wizard, was he? - and Hermione enjoyed herself thoroughly, even though she knew Snape had picked the intimate little corner table in order to best survey the room.

As long as she was traveling, she had eaten in restaurants: chain restaurants, family owned cafés, never anything terribly expensive. Entering the chatting mass of people was always an exercise in solitude and observation. Food only interested her in that it provided sensations to experience. As long as she was fully engaged in taste, memory could not come to the forefront. It never worked for very long, but it was as good as anything else. Now, though, she was part of the crowd, not strangely separated.

She appreciated it.

They walked back afterwards, discussing spatium blossom and its uses, discussing which professors would be returning to Hogwarts. It was throwaway talk, easily spoken and forgotten. "You've changed your mind on my conversation then? From the hotel. In New York." It was surprising to find that when the words made their way out of her mouth, they were teasing and light.

"Not at all. When I am forced to converse with a lesser mind, I make the best of it."

_I have changed,_ she thought. _That comment's not meant to be cutting in the least. Last year I would have -_

Her amusement was suddenly gone. Last year was not worth mentioning. She had to relive it often enough, both waking and sleeping, to wish to forget as often as possible.

  
  
  
  
_Miss Hermione Granger has had a change of heart._

The sentence was slick in Riddle's - Harry's - mouth, with properly hissing sibilants and a precise ending. It was beautiful in its way. Every few years there was a prize, the wonder student, acing their O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s to set a new record or match the old one. It had been his goal, before, to coax every single one to his side, barring Mudbloods and Weasleys. It seemed that Snape had done half the coaxing for him, here.

Snape, now - that was another matter, and despite the letter he had sent Riddle was of two minds about it. Snape had made his choice of loyalties and reneged on it, but many a Slytherin might say the same, about less important causes. He could say it himself, once, when he was the protégé of the old conservatives that longed for a return to the isolation of the wizarding world. _Magic seeks magic; blood seeks blood, and that is the way it should always be,_ he remembered one saying - Cecil or William or perhaps another Thomas, not titled but certainly rich, speaking to the student Headmaster Dippet found so very trustworthy.

He had killed that one's grandson, a young Ravenclaw half-blood with excellent marks. Evidently the old man's morals had stopped at his front door, if he had allowed his son to marry a Muggle. It wasn't the boy's fault, but his grandfather was dead, and revenge for any slight at all must be taken seriously.

Hypocrisy was not something Lord Voldemort welcomed. When one had a compelling reason, on the other hand, contradicting oneself was perfectly acceptable. After Dumbledore had so carefully cultivated Harry Potter, after he had soothed the Weasley boy's ego and fed Hermione Granger's lust for knowledge - after all that, he was dead, and his greatest student with him. It was tempting to kill Granger, for a moment. He had no compunction about threatening to do so. But _waste not want not,_ the orphanage's motto, was too firmly ingrained into him for that. It was the only thing he had learned there of any use, apart from the basic dog-eat-dog realities of life.

Waste not, want not. The Weasley would never be his, but by Malfoy's account, Granger was under Snape's thumb. The owl he had sent was quite intelligent; it supported Malfoy's assessment, hooting and turning its head almost all the way around to put an exclamation point on its agreement.

Which brought him back to Snape. 

_Trust among Slytherins - a funny thing, and not one which comes easily to us. Very well. The test shall have to be to the death, then._

But already Riddle planned for the future, the sweet Mudblood purifying herself, fighting for him, following his directions. It was a delicious insult to Dumbledore's memory. Yes, he would write a letter to the Skeeter woman, and she would release the news. _Miss Hermione Granger has had a change of heart._ It would be years from now before the story bubbled up, years in which he would steadily gain - but when it did, when it made front-page news (for where else would news about the best friend of Harry Potter himself go?), it would be fully worth the wait.

  
  
  
  
A particularly vindictive sunbeam hit Hermione's face at just the right angle to awaken her. She rubbed sleep from her eyes and stretched, feeling unfamiliar sheets scrape against her skin. _The red bedroom at Snape Castle,_ some part of her brain registered. 

The fairground was splashed with red paint, all over. Harry loved the turning twisting stomach-lurching rides, and Ron followed him gamely, but Hermione gravitated towards the high swings. They gave the feeling of flying combined with the deep-seated security of Muggle metal, gears and ropes completely solid. This was the thrill of her childhood, the only magic she had been born with.

"Are you enjoying yourself?" Mum called, and Hermione knew Harry was trying to answer, but the words were ripped away by the wind. She twisted in her seat, laughed at Ron's nervousness at trusting anything without magic. They laughed together, flying through the air at the fair.

Nobody ever knew about their excursion, the last summer before the siege. Ginny had been sick at home, so Mum had taken them to Diagon Alley, and whispered the idea of going to the fair to her like a secret - "because I'm sure your friends would like a break after we've gone shopping" - and she never felt the need to break her promise. Dumbledore would have been horrified. A fairground, a place rife with danger! 

_Oh but surely the Dark Lord wouldn't attack this many Muggles at once, and surely he won't have an idea where we are, since we haven't used magic to get here and there's no Locator on Harry,_ the rationale had been. It had been the right one. Nothing had happened, nothing at all.

Sunlight glared at her, and she was floating between fairground and waking. A vision again. She lay on the red duvet, surveying the room through slitted eyes, and thought. 

It would have been the perfect day, that time at the fairground, if Ron had only admitted to loving her even then.

_The past is the past is the past._ She sat up abruptly, regretting that there weren't any cigarettes. It was impossible to feel ungrateful to Professor Snape's house-elf when she found new Muggle clothing neatly folded on the armchair, a fire warming the room and breakfast already laid out. Coffee did a great deal to revive her and end the urge for nicotine (_honestly, you never got addicted even when you were smoking every day, why now when you've missed some time?_). 

Armored and fortified she ventured into the halls. Opening a door not so far from her room's, she found herself standing on a balcony in the upper reaches of the library. A black figure sat beneath her: Snape, already working.

"Come down from there," he told her brusquely. "You were ready enough to research your plans before. I've pulled the books on basic protection spells and some on geasa for good measure. I shall be working from the other end, studying possessions and spirit magics."

The books he had chosen were all very thick, very old, and very interesting. Hermione had never felt the pull of fiction; poetry was the closest she got, as she tried to analyze her way into the author's mind. Spells combined soul and science. They were her true passion, combining the archaic with the new and the esoteric with common knowledge. Once she was tutored by Professor Flitwick in theory of magic. In an essay, she wrote that "Eyes are not the windows to the soul of a wizard - spells are."

The fourth book down was entitled _The Ancient Magics: Geasa and Runes_, written by one Holden Locke quite recently. Snape put his hand on it before she had a chance to, and she nearly protested, but he cut her off. "There is a passage here I think you will be particularly interested in." Indeed, the book fell open to a page towards the end, and he began to read. "Magic is the art of binding - binding the supernatural to your will, binding hatred and love into useful forms. Therefore, geasa are little more than an order given and bound to a person or object, as everything can be bound with the correct understanding of its nature. This leads to the natural conclusion that everything can be unbound, even a geas. None have ever succeeded in this aim, and it is possible none ever will, but destroying a geas is a theoretically unobjectionable action." 

"So I could -"

Her waiting hands recieved the book. He wore his most skeptical expression. "This is the first author I've found that says it might be possible. Obscurus Books is a reliable publisher, but I can hardly become invested in the idea when it is supported only by one scholar."

Hermione nodded, bent her head, and read. The rest of the book was quite dry, even by her standards. She had not studied enough of modern magical theory to truly grasp it, despite her good grounding in Merlin's original principles. The words began to blur. She was reading a book in the back of an car, driven by her cousin Simon, trying to focus. It was hopeless. Her parents were dead and unshed tears fogged her eyes, making the page waver.

"You alright, Hermione?" 

The stiffness in his voice was clear: he had never been a talkative boy, especially with the ten years' age difference between them, and now he did not know how to comfort her. "I'm fine," she told him, staring out the window. People poled down the Thames. It was a wonderful day to be a Muggle tourist in Oxford, she supposed.

She felt each bump in the road as they traveled on, but she barely noticed when he parked the car, sitting behind the wheel and staring ahead. "I haven't spoken much to you since you went off to boarding school, love, but I really did love Aunt Joyce to pieces. And I missed you, too. I only wish you hadn't been gone so often -"

Hermione closed her eyes, feeling the tears begin to fall in the memory (and vaguely, faintly, feeling them well up in her real eyes as well). "I _do_ wish I'd never gone to Hogwarts," she choked out, "And I wish you wouldn't talk about it, Simon, for all you mean well!" Her book fell to the seat as she slammed out of the car and into the church.

Then she was awake again, slumped in her chair in Snape's library. Her unfocused eyes caught on the image of Snape starting a fire and she realized the geas was wreaking havoc again. Her necklace had slipped out of her shirt, lying dark against the white fabric, taunting her. She left it there, ignoring the urge to open it and allow herself to be swept away.

"Did this happen earlier?" he asked, not accusatory but in a tone of voice that was entirely the teacher's.

"When I woke up. It wasn't very long, just a moment - it might have only been a real memory." The idea was unconvincing even to her.

"The Hogwarts Floo's connected again. You might return to Hogwarts for an hour or so, to regain your footing away from the geas." 

Hermione nodded, smiled a little. "Do you think we could get my clothes back from my cousin? Muggle post should have them there soon."

"I'm sure Professor McGonagall will be happy to arrange for it. The fireplace will remain connected for another four hours, so we needn't worry about getting trapped." She took some Floo powder from the pouch he offered her. "Say 'Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, Entrance Hall, Grand Fireplace.'"

She followed his instructions, enunciating clearly. The Floo launched her through the chimneys and spat her out into the fireplace in the Entrance Hall. She was surprised to feel Snape fall into place behind her. Together they stumbled out and into the hall.

There must have been a charm hooked up to the fireplace to tell when someone was coming, for Professor McGonagall was waiting for them, and Dame Betsey Kneen. 

"There's bad news, I'm afraid, Severus," McGonagall said. "We've a note saying that Arabella Figg won't be coming - she's the new Potions mistress, Hermione - and I don't believe she'd _do_ this!"

Snape looked down at Hermione and then back to McGonagall. "If the other teachers are here, perhaps we'd better take this to your office, Minerva," he pointed out. So they followed the granite steps upwards to where Dumbledore had once lived, the gargoyle nodding as they entered ("Morwenstow!").

The room was entirely different from before. The shelves were still lined with books, but Fawkes was gone, and most of the homey clutter as well. _A place for everything and everything in its place_ had always been McGonagall's credo, regarding her classroom; in that way, she and Snape were alike, each preferring order. Dumbledore had been the type to throw everything everywhere and rely on _Accio_ to find what he was looking for.

They seated themselves - Hermione knew, thanks to _Hogwarts: A History_, that there would always be just the right number of chairs for the gathered company in the headmaster's (or mistress's) quarters. "I recieved this note this morning," the headmistress offered.

It was written on Muggle paper with a ballpoint pen. It took Hermione a moment to realize that the name printed on the stationery was the same as the name of the hotel they had stayed at in New York. She almost spoke, but Snape looked meaningfully at her. The message was short and to the point. The signature looked genuine.

"Imperius? Or simply a change of heart?" Kneen asked Snape. He was about to reply, his mouth already forming the words, when a head suddenly popped out of the fireplace. It was Lupin, a piece of paper in his mouth. Hermione leaped up and took it from him.

"Thank Merlin you're here," he said as soon as he was able to speak. "I just got this, and - Elspeth went shopping and she says she isn't coming back. Grandmother, do you know anything about it? Anything at all?"

The tone of voice he spoke in was immediately recognizable. Hermione remembered it from the Shrieking Shack. _Third year,_ she thought, _When he realized that Sirius Black was innocent - that's the same tone, but sadder. And Dame Betsey Kneen is Elspeth's grandmother, of course, or something very like it, so Lupin calls her that and suspects her of conspiring with her granddaughter -_

Kneen read the note quickly. "Elspeth left you? To go to North America? And she didn't even tell you she was leaving until she got there?" She pinched her lips tightly together, handing the slip of paper back to Hermione. "She didn't say anything to me. She would have, too, if she was so desperately unhappy, unless something happened - and that, my dear, is a doubtful occurrence."

But Hermione had not even bothered to read the note. Her eyes were still stuck on the logo on the stationery. "Best Western," she said, "New York."

All eyes were rivetted on her as she held up the note McGonagall had recieved. "It's the same paper - and it's the same hotel Snape and I stayed in when we were in New York. Doesn't that strike you as strange? If they'd been kidnapped, who would have known?"

"Once is an accident, twice a coincidence, three times a pattern," the headmistress intoned, in the way some people do when they have nothing to say but a platitude.

"I _said_ Elspeth would never leave without telling me," Dame Betsey said. A cold cup of tea stood on the desk, and she swished it around, as though she could divine Elspeth's and Figg's whereabouts from it. "There's much that's fishy going on. I haven't an idea of where to start, but at least we know to start looking, now."

"I have an inkling of where they might be," Snape cut in, looking coolly into the faces of McGonagall and Kneen, "but I can't tell you right now. I don't know where, exactly, myself."

_You-Know-Who?_ Hermione mouthed to him, but he pretended not to see her.

McGonagall did her best to get it out of him. It was clear that she harbored the same suspicions he did, but wanted to hear it from his own lips. After all, there was no good reason why it should be them who were kidnapped, out of all the wizards in the world. There was no good reason for kidnapping at all, from any source. The Dark Lord was simply the most possible, besides being the name every person's mind immediately went to upon the suggestion of pain, coercion or death. Snape, however, would not budge. At length he said that he was planning on returning to the village as soon as possible and stood to go.

Kneen took his wrist as he began to walk away. She had been quite silent while they were going back and forth with their arguments and details. "Snape. You're Elspeth's first half-cousin once removed, you know."

"I know," he replied. 

"You can use the protection spells on her, then, to cause her to fall asleep. If worse comes to worse I'd rather she feel that - and it could be useful yet."

"Is that the spells that were put on her at birth?" Hermione queried.

"Yes," came the confirmation. "It only works if it's said by a person of her own blood.. Her keyword is 'feldspar,' and it has to be said with the proper intent, of course."

"I'll give you my word that I'll use it if I need to," Snape told her.

She looked very old, then, far older than Professor McGonagall. Her ebony cane seemed far too big for her thin frame and her eyes were huge and wrinkled as she sighed, sinking back in the chair.

"Elspeth will be fine," Hermione felt the need to tell her, although it went against her nature and all her experiences with grief. "I'm sure she'll be found, and everything will be fine."

Kneen smiled and patted her hand. Her doubt didn't need to be aired. They had debated for quite some time over nothing but a hunch, and there was little evidence that anything else would be discovered - unless Snape and Hermione had been believed, unless the Dark Lord wanted to bring them into his circles, unless Snape was to reprise his rôle as a spy. 


	7. So Fair And Foul A Day

**Part 7. So Foul And Fair A Day.**

  
Afternoon passed into evening quickly. Snape did not return to the library but instead said something about errands, leaving instructions with Bunter to allow no person entrance to the castle - only owls and fire calls were to be accepted. Hermione was not bothered as she took books back up to the red room she had been given to read. She had given up on marriage and childbirth charms. Something in the back of her mind told her that she had learned everything she needed to know; that instinct had never proved her wrong. Instead, she was studying the most recent _Ars Alchemica_ and several magical histories of North Yorkshire.

She was called down to supper by Bunter; it was not much later than they normally ate at Hogwarts, which pleased her for some obscure reason. They ate in the formal dining room, bunched up at one end of an exceedingly long table. There was not much talk. Snape commented that if he was not contacted shortly, he would send an owl to Malfoy himself. She nodded mute agreement.

As the house-elf took away their plates, the fire at the far end of the room suddenly sputtered and flared up. Craning her head without standing up, Hermione could just barely see a head nestled among the flames - Draco Malfoy's head. She quickly glanced over to Snape to see that he had noticed; he had.

"Snape! Granger!" Malfoy called.

"What are you waiting for? It's your castle," she prodded, stage-whispering.

He slowly put his fork down and folded his napkin. Every action was stylized and insolent; clearly he did not mind keeping Malfoy waiting. "Come. I suspect this message is for you also." Sauntering to the fire, he crouched by it and gave a cold smile. "Mr. Malfoy! What can I do for you?" Hermione followed suit.

"Our master expects you to go to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. Now. For a test of your loyalty." He smiled back. "Your absence will be taken as rejection of his offer."

"Is the gate open?" Snape asked

"Surely you remember? It's opened on the twenty-first of August and closed on the second of September. Yes, the gate is open. I shall see you there."

With a loud pop, Malfoy disappeared, and the fire rushed up to fill the space. It burned brighter than before. They stood quickly, and Hermione followed Snape through the halls of the castle. He walked briskly, calling orders to Bunter behind them. Eventually he held the door to the outside open for her, and they stood in the last rays of sunlight. "Have you ever Apparated to King's Cross Station?" he asked.

"No."

"Joint Apparation it shall be, then." He pulled out his wand and clasped her wrists the way he had done in Sacramento, when they had had to reach the river so quickly. As before, they were taken apart and put together. As before, Hermione felt scrambled, as though she had not been quite properly puzzled out. 

They were in a niche that was entirely overlooked by the crowds of Muggles. Snape took her arm as they emerged, stuffing their wands away and ignoring the looks of surprise that followed Snape's old-fashioned mode of dress. "I can't kill Malfoy; he's my godson. If it comes down to that, I shall have to trust in you, though the thought is quite frightening. Keep your wand at the ready, but don't brandish it," he instructed. "Remember we're supposed to be ... involved. Don't say no to anything he asks and _don't be a Gryffindor _for once in your life."

"Only snakes can deal with other snakes," she replied with some vitriol, masking her apprehension, and before she could think better of it, she ran for the barrier to enter the platform.

Suddenly she was in the midst of familiarity, despite the fact that there was nothing where the cherry-red Hogwarts Express normally stood. Most of the large space was empty. There were two people, though, seated on a bench on the far right. One was tall and fair, the other short and dark.

"Harry," Hermione whispered. Then she felt the touch of Snape's hand on her back - he must have followed her directly. "Master," she said more loudly, crossing the platform to kneel before what once was Harry Potter. Snape followed her, bending his head as he went in submission.

Now that she was closer, she could see that there were differences - not in the body itself, but in the way it was worn. Something about Harry had always been rather weedy and uncertain, almost awkward even. Combined with his young-looking face, it had made people overlook him, made it even odder when he was raised to heroic status. Now, though, that uncertainty was gone. It was replaced by an insolence of the sort that both Snape and the elder Malfoy exhibited. Harry would never wear black clothes along the line of Snape's. Harry would never sit just so, twirling his wand between his fingers.

"I am pleased that you have come," he said, and the voice was Harry's. "I am ready to accept you in my service quite quickly indeed. You've only to do one thing for me." Using the tip of his wand, the Dark Lord brushed some hair away from his forehead. It was as smooth as anyone else's. She could hear Snape's indrawn breath and did everything she could not to react. "There are two people who I believe should be summarily executed."

Malfoy uttered a charm at this cue, and behind the bench, two bound prisoners flickered into being. It was Mrs. Figg and a girl not very much older than Hermione - Elspeth Kneen. Elspeth lay limp against the silver ropes that held her, seemingly in pain, while Figg struggled against her bonds, trying to shout through a Silencing Spell.

"Why should you select _them_, my Lord? I do not question your judgement, but they are pureblood." Snape asked what Hermione was afraid to.

Not-Harry smiled. "You always did have questions. I shall indulge you. Arabella Figg killed Lucius Malfoy. Don't you remember? As for Kneen - I understand that Granger is to be the Maid at her wedding. They must be good friends, then, and what better way to prove her loyalty?"

"Shall I kill her now, for you, master?" Hermione asked with fervor, pulling her wand.

"No." Snape put his hand on her wrist. "I have lived with Figg's slights and insults for too long, master, to let this opportunity go to waste. I never played with the Muggles the way Malfoy always enjoyed - but if you wish I shall spill some of Figg's blood now, and make a pretty picture for the new students when they arrive."

"Go on," he said.

Malfoy cast the Imperius Curse on Figg before unbinding her, directing her to move forward. She stood directly in front of Hermione, her eyes frantic but her body following Malfoy's directions. "_Ensis,_" Snape said. A long, wickedly curved scimitar appeared in the air before him. He plucked it from where it hovered, his movements spare. "Perhaps we should move this way. Hermione does not enjoy the smell and taste of blood - and I intend to cut off her head."

Something flickered across the Dark Lord's face that Hermione could not identify, but he signaled to Malfoy. Figg moved to the center of the platform and knelt. Her white hair was short-cropped, and as she raised her head to provide a target for Snape's sword, the glinting gold collar she wore could be clearly seen around her neck.

Snape set his feet and gripped the sword very tightly. Then, in one quick swoop, he swung. The air hummed with the metal's movement. He was deadly accurate.

But the sword bounced.

It flew out of his hands and hit one of the posts that held the awning over the platform. There was an agonizing series of crashes as it fell to the floor, then lay there before disappearing. "Master, I -" Snape began, as Figg rubbed her neck and fingered the collar.

The Dark Lord laughed, a bitter sound that Hermione knew quite well. "I almost thought you were loyal after all, Severus. Did you not believe I knew of the famous Figg Collar? A pity. Come kneel before me. Face the Killing Curse like a Gryffindor might. Draco, be ready."

Hermione supposed that this could be construed as a compliment to her. 

Malfoy had turned his head to look at Snape, though his body was inclined toward the Dark Lord. His face was indescribable, almost unreadable. Some of the old hero-worship was there still, but it was tempered with age and newfound understanding. Snape moved slowly, not giving up his wand but slipping it into one sleeve as he stood tall. _This is not how it's supposed to go,_ Hermione thought frantically, her breath coming faster as she tried to stay calm. _It's not -_

"I cannot," Draco said. 

"I am his godfather - master," said Snape, his eyes darting between Hermione and the Dark Lord. Perhaps he knew then what the next move would be. 

"Bind him, then, Malfoy." He did, shooting ropes from his wand. "Hermione Granger. Come here."

She did, her feet silent on the concrete, stopping only a few inches from the bench where he sat. He was only a little taller than her when he stood. Strange, really, but she noticed it in a way she had never noticed it before. His hand was cold on her cheek as he traced down to her neck, down the line of the vacuita's thin chain. "I have a better task for you now. Kill the traitor."

Her eyes caught Snape's as she turned, but he looked away. This was a decision fully in her hands, on her head. No running. No hiding. No way to put it off to another person.

"No," she said. "No. I won't."

It was stupid, utterly stupid, to not utter a quick spell, to not make a quick move. She had always panicked in a crisis, no matter how good her intentions were. Now, instead of panicking, she simply did not think to act. Harry's voice came from behind her, surprised and angry. "Well, then. _Crucio._"

At first the pain was startling, but not unbearable, like a weak ache in all her bones. It strengthened. It came from the inside out: her throat hurt, her teeth, her tongue. Her stomach convulsed and her brain tried to press its way out through her eyes, shooting stars across her vision. She couldn't imagine another moment of pain, soon enough, and she tried to scream, but nothing in her body worked. The magic kept her from fainting, kept her eyes open and mostly seeing. The Dark Lord leaned back against the bench, like Harry after a tiring Quidditch game, his wand still out. Through the roaring in her ears she heard his voice. "Too much loyalty to the wrong person..."

Her hand clutched the vacuita, and somewhere she knew that the spasms were pulling it from her neck, carving a thin red line into her super-sensitive skin. If she could have thought, she would have tried to release it, to stop herself from pulling it off and breaking the geas. But she could not. The tearing, searing pain of the Cruciatus Curse and the feeling of being stretched to the breaking point, coming from the geas, mixed and melded. Together they grew worse and worse, till she could feel herself biting through her lip with it, trying to stay sane.

Then, in a moment, the pain was gone, and she knew she had fallen into a memory. This place, though, was not one she had seen before - it felt familiar, but she did not recognize it. It was a forest - the Forbidden Forest?

But before her rose a dark figure. She slumped, aching with the aftermath of Cruciatus, on the base of a tree, her eyes darting from side to side. "_Imperio,_" the voice said, backing into a shaft of light. It was Harry, his scar gone, his eyes sharp and glinting. Not Harry, then, but rather the Dark Lord inhabiting his body. Her mind worked as well as ever, but she knew that like before she was remembering, that if she tried to change the course of events she would surely fail. Her body tensed as she tried to resist the sweeping sensation of lightness that came over her.

_Say 'zeitgeist,'_ said a voice in her memory-mind, just as she had felt it before when Professor Moody had been teaching. She had never been good at fighting Imperius. _Say 'zeitgeist.' Say 'zeitgeist.' _With every ounce of her being she fought it, rejecting it, using as much magical power as she could draw on. 

"Zeitgeist," she heard herself say, and then her eyes slipped closed - her memory-eyes, that is. She could still think, though, and in her thoughts she consolidated all the clues into one idea.

Elspeth Kneen had a trigger word that made her fall asleep, part of the protection spells laid on her. Harry's parents had been married with full ceremony, just like Elspeth's, and they'd never have skimped on protecting their child. And that meant that any person who shared his blood could make him fall asleep with the right word, and now she knew it was 'zeitgeist,' and that meant...

Her eyes snapped open in the memory once more, just as Harry's voice whispered a memory charm. The pain returned and the world wavered - she was back in the present. But just as quickly she realized she lay limp; all she was feeling was its aftereffects. Harry's cold, indifferent face hovered over her, a drop of sweat rolling down his nose and hitting her forehead. He looked tired.

Just as she had in the memory, she whispered, putting the full force of her will behind the command. "Zeitgeist."

For a moment the wind was knocked out of her as Harry's - the Dark Lord's - body fell over hers. Then something happened. Hermione had been so dry and uncaring for so long that she almost thought it was impossible for her to feel that burning rage she once knew so intimately, anger which must have driven her into Gryffindor House. Now, covered in Lord Voldemort's pale sweating body, she felt it bubble up again. There was Ron, spidery-thin in the subterranean darkness of the corridors; there were her parents, eyes milky white, diagnosed with bizarre heart attacks by a befuddled Muggle coroner. There was Snape, staring at her with a mixture of shock and horror. There was Dumbledore's limp body, his beard singed.

And there, eyes closed and glasses digging into her still-hurting skin, was Harry.

If she had tried to lift her arm, she could not have done it. But she didn't try. She merely did, pulling the smooth weight of her wand from her sleeve and pressing it to the Dark Lord's temple. Her voice was surprised even to her own ears as she quite calmly spoke the Killing Curse.

There was no change in the feel of the body against her, but Hermione could sense the power flowing between them in spring green light. She never knew where that power came from, later. Perhaps there is some truth in the old belief that in stressful times humans can perform superhuman feats. Blankly, she sat up, letting the body fall away from her, ignoring the pain in her bones.

Before her, Snape was still bound. His arm, tightly clamped to his side, was tensed. From it poured streams of silver light, pooling around him, running like water. He stared down at it in something like pleasure, and Hermione knew his Dark Mark was disappearing. But behind them there was movement. Malfoy raised his wand, the same quicksilver substance soaking his own arm.

"No, you don't," came a familiar voice from behind them. "Go away_._ And that's an order."

Trying to turn and see, Hermione only moved in a way that was truly painful. She fell to the floor again, retching. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Malfoy fall in a fully body bind. But before her stood Harry Potter. 

"You okay? Harry asked, trying to help Hermione sit up. His hand brushed right through her, giving her chills. "I - Oh! Don't look at me like that. I'm _not_ Voldemort."

"Then what are you?" she asked stupidly, slowly trying to rise.

"You didn't think I was completely gone, did you? He could only push me down when he took over my body; he couldn't push me out. If you'd been able to exorcise him..."

"But you're a ghost."

"My life's work's not over yet, Hermione! I had a lot of time to think about it while he was running my body - I almost hoped this would happen. So I'm stuck on this earth awhile. You don't get a goal to complete when you become a ghost, you know. You just haunt the earth and hope you finish your task before it gets too boring."

She laid her head down again, wanting nothing more than to fall asleep. Strong hands shook her, suddenly. "Wake up, girl! I know you're going into backshock, but it'll do you no good to sleep," the owner of the hands said. It was Mrs. Figg; she must have bound Malfoy before.

"Oh, thank God. Snape? And the girl - Elspeth, was it?" Harry asked.

"I'll untie them; I'm not much the worse for wear. Snape? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Figg. Potter, if you were still awake in him, why didn't you _do_ anything, using that great heroic mind of yours?"

Hermione, more aware though still unbearably weary, saw Harry straighten up at Snape's tone. "We never covered possessions in Defense Against the Dark Arts, sir," he muttered. "I tried to do it the way you fight the Imperius curse, but..."

What might have been an ugly scene was stopped by Figg untying Elspeth's silver bonds. The girl was ridiculously grateful, rubbing at where they had crossed her; her skin was scored in ugly welts. She licked dry lips, exposing slightly pointed teeth, and picked herself up. "I didn't think we were going to make it there," she said in a throaty voice. "Is Remus all right? He said -"

"Lupin is fine," Snape assured her. "Figg, if you could untie me, I'd be most grateful." As soon as he was free, he Apparated for help. Tired, wrung out, and hurt, the other four sat not looking at each other and not looking at the body or at Malfoy. Eventually, like before, the Ministry came and took them away. 


	8. Yet There Is Method

**Part 8. Yet There Is Method.  
**  
The wedding went off beautifully, as that sort of thing always does. Where the two werewolves might have been cast out before, they were pitied or even championed. After all, Harry Potter's word could not be doubted, once the ghost had been ascertained to be truly him, and the Daily Prophet had chosen to put a good spin on the entire matter. The only person who truly enjoyed the publicity was Arabella Figg, who had gone so long watching Harry without a word of thanks. She was naturally a brisk, capable woman, and she used her interviews to best advantage. "Someday, Arabella will be Minister of Magic - you watch," McGonagall commented.

Elspeth was a great disappointment to Hermione. While the girl was kind enough - and Hermione did think of her as a 'girl,' though she was older - she lacked something essential. Their politics were different, for one, as Hermione had never been anything but a bleeding-heart liberal; furthermore, she seemed to see the world through rose colored glasses. It was an ability to be envied, but that did not mean it made her pleasant to be around. She was clearly besotted with Lupin, and he was quite in love with her, so there was nothing that could be said about it. 

The reception was held in The Leaky Cauldron, where all the windows and doors were flung open and the tables spilled out into the street to make one big party. Inside, a dance floor had been cleared. Madame Rosmerta tended the bar and made sure there were enough strawberries and cake for everyone who wanted some, whistling the march from Lohengrin. There were so many people that it was almost claustrophobic, and they all seemed to have different things to talk to her about. Sirius Black, Professor Sprout, all the Weasleys. They came in a parade. The one person she enjoyed seeing was Dame Betsey Kneen, now out of her disguise as Professor Trelawney.

"The Dark Lord is truly gone now," she told Hermione, "And there is nothing more to hide. I was posing as Trelawney because of a prophecy I made. It was the first one that I ever knew would come true. I was in the middle of a dinner party."

"What was the prophecy?"

She smiled, leaning on her ebony stick. "I said, 'The boy who lived will live two times and half again.' And now you see that it did come to pass."

Elspeth came and brought Kneen away, then, to meet someone she had known at school; Hermione was immediately cornered by Angelina Johnson, who led her about, introducing her to people and talking very quickly about everything that had happened since she had left school. Eventually she stood on tiptoes and scanned the room. Snape was gone.

Muttering something about getting another drink to the person talking to her - someone she had never met before, who she gathered was one of Elspeth's relations - she headed for the door, but as she stepped outside a freckled hand stopped her. Ron.

"Why didn't you owl me?" he asked, sounding hurt.

"I didn't feel like it. I was really lost, Ron. It's been strange." Now that she was confronted with him again, there did not seem to be much to say. "I know you always said you loved me, but -"

She remembered the way his eyes fluttered closed, how his skin was so white that blue smudges appeared where veins ran close to the surface. It was the same, only a little older, a little wiser. "What we say isn't always true. It was Harry all along, wasn't it? Harry who kept us together, Harry who made it happen - that we thought we were in love, that is."

"You've seen him?"

"Yes - he seems happy, happier than I can remember. He doesn't blame me at all, even though I couldn't do anything to help him - so. I think maybe it's time that we try to get along without the vacuita." The change in subject was quite abrupt, but Hermione could trace his logic. Harry was back, was there to keep their friendship in place once more, and now perhaps Ron was strong enough to try and deal with his problems on his own.

The hair on the back of her arms stood up as she lifted the vacuita, looked carefully at its black cover. That little book had caused so many things that she was unsure if she truly wanted to let it go. 

_But you can't let it go. Not with the geas still in place._

Instead of telling Ron the whole sordid story, starting from where it really began and not from the place the penny papers started in on, she nodded. "I think maybe it is."

It was simple enough to remove the spell. They didn't even need to call in McGonagall to do it. Ron simply pressed the tip of his wand to the book where it hung between her breasts and said, "_Finite Vacuitas Incantatum._"

As though a switch had been flipped somewhere, Hermione's emotions changed. Her mind felt lighter, somehow, less burdened by times past and things future. Ron, in contrast, simply sighed. "Better?" he asked.

"I haven't felt this way since I was - I don't know when," she admitted. "For you?"

"I was happier before, I think, but it always felt like there was a piece missing. Like when you remember someone's name, but nothing else about them. Now it's back." Suddenly he pressed his lips together. "I should stay for Remus, but -"

"He'll understand, if you need to talk to Harry. Go on."

With a last, brave smile and a soft whoosh of air, he Disapparated. Instead of turning back to the party, Hermione walked through the space where he had been and into the quickly falling night; Lupin and Elspeth would not Apparate away for several hours yet. Not many people were outside, but there was one, a dark figure walking up the path to the castle. She followed, knowing it was Snape.

It was nearly a mile back to the castle, and the walk took some time. Surely Snape was aware that she was following him, but he didn't react to her presence, and she stayed some distance behind. The quiet fields were somewhat comforting, grass waving gently in the moonlight. She took the time to contemplate the fact that the little black book she could not remove was nothing more than a book, now. If she opened it, the pages would be blank and empty, and she could write on them. There was nothing to fear there, no memories that might yet destroy her. Her own memories were faded, now, black-and-white rather than the vibrant living color they had been before. _But isn't that why memories are so dear to us? We forget things, and what we have left is all the more precious?_

"If you wish to walk with me, Miss Granger, you are welcome to," offered Snape, "although there are no Death Eaters here, and we need not keep up that particular charade."

"I didn't find it so unpleasant," she responded, hurrying to catch up.

He smiled, those eyes she had once described as beetle-black glinting in the moonlight - not unpleasantly but merely as any person's eyes might. They were in the formal garden, then, and she was reminded of how he stalked through at the Yule Ball, blasting unfortunate couples. Then she had seen it from the windows; it was different to be out in the night air, walking in silence, with the dark bulk of the building solid and sure near the path.

"Miss Granger." His voice was soft and dangerous, a voice she associated with losing points. "I fear that you are out after hours."

"I do believe I am." He was only teasing, lighthearted, and she appreciated the attempt, but it was clearly forced. "And so are you. What's on your mind - insomnia?"

A bitter laugh. "No, I just came from a very scintillating party. The créme de la créme of wizarding society was there. Unfortunately, I found myself unable to enjoy it. And if I'd spoken to you -"

"Sirius would have said something. He said something to me anyway, about how I finally was just as famous as Harry - but I had to share it with you. Ron didn't say anything."

"I don't care about Weasley."

"You'd have me believe that you don't care about anyone, and that's not true, or why did you leave Hogwarts in the first place?" Her tone was more pointed than she had intended it to be, even a little hurt. Snape was silent. "I missed you these past few days. I'd become accustomed to you."

It was a moment of passing judgement. It was a moment of fear, almost, that she had said something wrong and gone too far and spoiled whatever might be possible. But she felt a hand on her shoulder, felt him shift closer in order to speak more privately, and knew she had not been wrong. "Or perhaps - you'd merely grown numb."

"No. No, accustomed is the right word." And she smiled as sweetly as she could, and opened the door for him, mock-bowing as they came into the entrance hall. Up the stairs, silent. Through the passages, silent. The portrait of Jeanne d'Arc recognized Snape and swung open at his approach.

Hermione was unsure why she had followed him, but it was not a time to be cautious. _Do something rash,_ she thought to herself. _You've proved you're capable of it by picking up and leaving. Now follow through on it._

"Wait." He was half-in and half-out of his rooms, paused in the doorway, already moving to hang up his cloak. Instead he turned back to her expectantly, and in that one moment of indecision he saw her thoughts. When she kissed him, as softly as she could, he did not back away. And just as she was about to turn and go, he grabbed her wrist, and stopped her from leaving.

"I hope I have not misunderstood you," he said quite softly, his hand touching her cheek, smoothing hair away from her face. Her arms twined about his neck, and she did her best to show him that he had not mistaken her. _Such a strange thing, _she thought, as she felt his lips brush her temple in an almost affectionate gesture. _Such a very, very strange thing. _But there was very little thinking involved as they stumbled back into his room, conscious of kissing in the hall like students; and while Snape may have been thinking something as his hands skimmed her body and his mouth left bruises on her skin, she doubted it.

  
  
  
  
  
The morning dawned quite pink and orange, the sun casting odd shadows in the room. Hermione woke up with a jolt when her eyes flew open to smooth white limbs holding her close. It was Snape: and furthermore, it was Snape in the quarters he had taken over at Hogwarts. _Strange,_ she thought again. It was the same idea she'd had in her head since she first saw him, standing on the next balcony over. Especially strange that they were spooned together in a way she had always associated with romance novels. Especially strange that he was still asleep, and she did not feel like slipping away, even if she could have.

His rooms were white plastered, with archways instead of doors, and appeared very Mediterranean. There were not many personal effects lying about, beyond some books. The style did not seem to suit him particularly, although she liked the sunny brightness a great deal. 

"Miss Granger," Snape said sleepily. "A good morning to you."

"I think we've progressed a bit past _Miss Granger_," she replied. Even without looking it was easy to tell that his manner was becoming more guarded.

"Have we?"

"I'd like to think so."

They were silent, then, curled up together without an idea as to how to go forward. Hermione imagined that his thoughts were something like hers: surprised, worried a little, not wanting to make a misstep.

"May I see where the Dark Mark was?" she finally asked, her curiosity getting the better of her. It was something she had wanted to do since the day at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, but she always thought asking would be a mistake. Now it seemed appropriate, though why, she couldn't say.

"I find I couldn't deny you anything, at the moment," he said in a tone that was almost droll. "If you had asked me before - but that is neither here nor there. Yes, you may see it, not that you haven't already."

Where a black skull had once grinned on the arm he presented, there was now nothing more than a shiny, whitish blemish. It seemed that the quicksilver-stuff had left its mark. Running a finger over it, she noted that the skin was smooth, not raised like Harry's curse scar. She would have examined it further if Snape had not suddenly taken in a sharp breath and looked up.

"Around your neck, Hermione. Your necklace -"

"-isn't there," she finished. She cast her eyes about the room. The little black book and chain stood out against the silk stockings she had thrown aside so hastily. Pulling on the shirt Snape had discarded earlier - now that she was presented with the idea of being naked in front of him during the day, she was less enthusiastic - she picked it up to see what had happened. It was the same as ever. "'Geasa are little more than an order given and bound to a person or object, as everything can be bound with the correct understanding of its nature. This leads to the natural conclusion that everything can be unbound, even a geas,'" she recited, her mind making the sort of connection Harry and Ron had always valued her for. "Ron removed the spells on the vacuita last night. When Minerva laid the geasa on me, they weren't tied into the necklace. They were tied into the _vacuita._ And now that it isn't a vacuita anymore, the geasa don't apply."

If she had expected a feeling of happiness, she was disappointed. Instead she felt satisfied, the puzzles complete and spread out before her. _Logic, not magic,_ she had told Harry in their first year. Logic was her gift, and perhaps it was a better gift than any aptitude for Transfiguration or Herbology could be. With logic, she would be able to think through almost any situation -

"I always knew you were something of a showoff," Snape said in a tone which reminded her much more of the classroom than of the previous night. "There is one thing you've missed, though - one thing I can claim to have thought of myself."

"What?"

"Riddle me this: Why would the Dark Lord have chosen to go to Sacramento, California - a city of no importance in the wizarding sense, a city with very little to recommend it in terms of magical _or_ Muggle culture, when he had his pick of the Malfoy properties?"

Her suspicion that he had always enjoyed knowing things other people did not was right. He kept her in suspense for the entire day. The castle was slow to rouse after so many of the teachers had been at the reception the night before, but rouse it did, for the first staff meeting and the final preparations for the new term. It had been planned for some time that that day they were to return to Sacramento to put their apartments there in order and decide whether they would stay on at the Center for Alchemical and Potions Research (Arabella Figg had nearly forced them to, pointing out that there was little reason to shilly-shally about with the matter).

Silently they walked out to Hogsmeade and Apparated from there directly to Hermione's apartment. It was just as it had been when they had left it, without so much as a covering of dust to indicate that it had been uninhabited. It was a reminder of how short a time they had really been gone. Little more than a week, it was, but so much had happened! 

Sitting on the faded old couch, Hermione finally had to think out what her future would hold. There was not much for her. She had not replied to her Oxford acceptance letter, and anyway her money was gone, used up when she fled England. She could stay with the Center, but it was a job that she knew she would grow to hate: too little time for study and innovation, far too much time doing menial tasks. The Weasleys couldn't take her in; friendship only goes so far. Jobs in England were hard to come by, if you had your N.E.W.T.s but no apprenticeship, and by this time the apprenticeships would have been filled.

"I'm leaving the Center," Snape remarked, when she had been silent a long time. "Figg is resigning the position of Potions mistress at the staff meeting today. I'm the only true master of the art they'll be able to find at such short notice."

"That's good," she responded blankly.

"Mnemosyne Vector asked me if I thought you would be interested in apprenticing with her. She wishes to retire soon. She's got great-grandchildren now, and she says she'd like to spend time with them."

It was the best idea she could have hoped for. She decided to apprentice to Vector very quickly, and afterwards they completed their errands quite briskly. Soon they stood in front of the Center's headquarters, a small house in a nice part of town, and had nothing left to do but return to Hogwarts.

Hermione was about to Apparate, but Snape stopped her. "Aren't you going to ask me why You-Know-Who came here, Granger? Do you want to investigate - to see for yourself the place he stayed?"

"It's close by?"

"Not even a block away. Lucius Malfoy brought me there once." From the look on his face, it had not been a pleasant visit. He pointed over the low rooftops of the houses: now that she looked, she could see that one of them was marked by a blue glow, the sign that the Aurors had condemned a house. No Muggle could see that mark. It was a large place; the Malfoys must have knocked down several of the small tract homes to build it, she saw, as they walked towards it. The gate was closed, but Snape opened it with a quick _Alohomora._ They slipped inside.

As they walked up to it, it was clear it had been built to appear like one of the missions the Spanish had made up and down the California coast. Though the doors were locked, it was not warded. The furniture had already been moved out. It must have been entirely cleaned and scrubbed, because there was no evidence of inhabitation anywhere. The rooms were large but eerily empty, the plate glass of the windows that faced the river reflecting nothing but bare, creamy wall.

Snape led her through the house, backtracking when he found dead ends, for a while before they found a back door. The sun hung low in the sky behind them; floating down the river, Muggles were loud and raucous. Late-blooming gardenias hugged the house and tiny blue flowers grew all over the riverbanks, entangled with grass and weeds. "I thought you'd been keeping up with _Ars Alchemica _since you were a fifth year," he said disapprovingly. "Your famed mind should have figured out why this property was so attractive by now. It's the flowers, of course."

"Spatium blossoms? The uses of spatium blossoms - It's used in some potions to strengthen the attachment of one's soul to one's body."

"Algernon Figg wrote that, ironically enough. In those potions it must be fresh and natural-grown, not kept with any magic. This is the only place it grows. Even this stuff is ruined now, from the Aurors' spell-sign."

"Then when we saw him, he hadn't had any of the potion for several days. He seemed weak."

"He was far weaker than I'd seen him before, though it's said he once had to be nursed back to health. He couldn't have performed the Killing Curse."

"A pleasant thing to know. If only we'd known it then, I would have been much happier," Hermione noted. Then she Apparated, forcing him to follow quickly after.

  
  
  
  
At Hogwarts they were welcomed back. Things went as planned, with Hermione speaking to Professor Vector and Snape being asked to become Potions master and head of Slytherin once more. Something had changed during the day, though. The mysteries _were_ all solved, now. Everything was laid out as it ought to be, and Harry had even returned. She and Ron were doing what they had always been expected to do. The castle was as safe and impregnable as it had always felt, even during the siege, even when all seemed lost.

But one thing was not safe and secure, and that was Snape. She had been foolish to expect any more than he had given her; it was a wonder she had even been allowed that comfort. They had spent a week in each others' company at most. Neither would have chosen it, had they been offered that choice at the time. Once she left his presence, she was uncertain whether she would be welcomed back. She had slept with him. That was something she had taken lightly at the time, but was taking less and less lightly the more she thought about it.

There was something which had grown very quickly in her: an affection for him, perhaps. One could not go quite so far as to call it love. It was nothing like what she had felt for Ron, giving in to a long-expected confession, when they sat together with Harry and hoped that the wards would hold up one more day. Instead it was something that caught her in unlikely moments. She would see him out of the corner of her eye and automatically turn her head to follow his movement. His actions were the same as ever, and yet he was not so bad tempered as she had thought he was.

None of her things had been left in his rooms; she had no pretext to go and see him.

"Miss Hermione," a voice came from behind her chair, but it was not who she had been hoping. Instead, Dobby scurried up to stand on the table in front of her. "Dobby is being told to tell you that Professor Snape is wondering if you would like to continue your study of advanced Potions. He is saying to Dobby that you should come to see him now, Miss, if you want, to discuss it. And he is giving Dobby this note for you."

_I seeketh only self to please, to bind another to my delight. Perhaps I shall make a Potions Mistress from you yet, given time - I am not averse to your company.  
_  
"I suppose that's as close to a declaration of -" _Love?_ " - affection as I'll ever get," she said to nobody in particular. "Thank you, Dobby. I'll go see him now."__

**THE END.  
  
**"The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is the meaning of fiction!"  
- Oscar Wilde "The Importance of Being Earnest" 


End file.
